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Rh But, if a really good wife can be found, he admits with the wise Hebrew king that "her price is above rubies." Verses like the following, salvage from the wreck of his plays, passed into proverbs:—

He is honest enough, too, to lay the fault of ill-assorted marriages at the door of those who have to choose in such a matter, as much as of those who are chosen; in this, as in other things, he recognises a certain law of supply and demand.

The gibes which he launches against women seem to have been not more than half in earnest. He probably borrowed the tone from Euripides, of whom he was a great admirer, and whose influence may be pretty clearly traced in the style and sentiment of his comedies.

We usually find, then, the chief parts in the comedy filled by the members of one or two neighbouring