The third charge is, a mixture of tragick and comick style.  This accusation is certainly true; Aristophanes often gets into the buskin; but we must examine upon what occasion.  He does not take upon him the character of a tragick writer; but, having remarked that his trick of parody was always well received, by a people who liked to laugh at that for which they had been just weeping, he is eternally using the same craft; and there is scarcely any tragedy or striking passage known by memory, by the Athenians, which he does not turn into merriment, by throwing over it a dress of ridicule and burlesque, which is done sometimes by changing or transposing the words, and sometimes by an unexpected application of the whole sentence.  These are the shreds of tragedy, in which he arrays the comick muse, to make her still more comick.  Cratinus had before done the same thing; and we know that he made a comedy called Ulysses, to burlesque Homer and his Odyssey; which shows, that the wits and poets are, with respect to one another, much the same at all times, and that it was at Athens as here.  I will prove this system by facts, particularly with respect to the merriment of Aristophanes, upon our three celebrated tragedians.  This being the case, the mingled style of Aristophanes will, perhaps, not deserve so much censure as Plutarch has vented.  We have no need of the travesty of Virgil, nor the parodies of our own time, nor of the Lutrin of Boileau, to show us, that this medly may have its merit upon particular occasions.

The same may be said, in general, of his obscurity, his meannesses, and his high flights, and of all the seeming inequality of style, which puts Plutarch in a rage.  These censures can never be just upon a poet, whose style has always been allowed to be perfectly attick, and of an atticism which made him extremely delightful to the lovers of the Athenian taste.  Plutarch, perhaps, rather means to blame the choruses, of which the language is sometimes elevated, sometimes burlesque, always very poetical, and, therefore, in appearance, not suitable to comedy.  But the chorus, which had been borrowed from tragedy, was then all the fashion, particularly for pieces of satire, and Aristophanes admitted them, like the other poets of the old, and, perhaps, of the middle comedy; whereas Menander suppressed them, not so much in compliance with his own judgment, as in obedience to the publick edicts.  It is not, therefore, this mixture of tragick and comick that will place Aristophanes below Menander.

The fifth charge is, that he kept no distinction of character; that, for example, he makes women speak like orators, and orators like slaves:  but it appears, by the characters which he ridicules, that this objection falls of itself.  It is sufficient to say, that a poet who painted not imaginary characters, but real persons, men well known, citizens whom he called by their names, and showed in dresses like their own, and masks resembling their faces, whom he branded