Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/154

 not to be gauged by any influence which it exercised, or sought, over special situations or definite projects. Indeed, it rarely attempted this. Almost the only extant instance occurs in the Frogs of Aristophanes, where he urges that a general amnesty should be granted to all citizens who had been implicated in the Revolution of the Four Hundred. In such a sense, it may be granted. Comedy might do little; but its real power operated in a totally different way. When a large body of people has common opinions or feelings, these are intensified in each individual by the demonstration that so many others share them. A public meeting tends in itself to quicken enthusiasm for a party or a cause, be the oratory never so flat and the sentiments never so trite. Aristophanes gave the most brilliant expression to a whole range of thought and feeling with which thousands of minds were in general sympathy. Can it be doubted that he contributed powerfully to strengthen the prejudice against everything that he regarded as dangerous innovation? Or, again, can it be doubted that he did much to give his fellow-citizens a more vivid insight into the arts of unscrupulous demagogues? The cajolers of the people, as depicted in the comedy of the Knights, are drawn in strong colours, but with fine strokes also: while the character of Demus, the People—their supposed dupe—is drawn with a tact which no satirist or political journalist has ever surpassed. If I had to stake the political power of Aristophanes on the evidence of one short passage, it should be that