There is a motive of interest, at the bottom, which disposed Elian, Plutarch, and many others, to condemn this poet without appeal.  Socrates, who is said to have been destroyed by a poetical attack, at the instigation of two wretches[30], has too many friends among good men, to have pardon granted to so horrid a crime.  This has filled them with an implacable hatred against Aristophanes, which is mingled with the spirit of philosophy; a spirit, wherever it comes, more dangerous than any other.  A common enemy will confess some good qualities in his adversary; but a philosopher, made partial by philosophy, is never at rest till he has totally destroyed him who has hurt the most tender part of his heart; that is, has disturbed him in his adherence to some character, which, like that of Socrates, takes possession of the mind.  The mind is the freest part of man, and the most tender of its liberties; possessions, life, and reputation may be in another’s power, but opinion is always independent.  If any man can obtain that gentle influence, by which he ingratiates himself with the understanding, and makes a sect in a commonwealth, his followers will sacrifice themselves for him, and nobody will be pardoned that dares to attack him, justly or unjustly, because that truth, real or imaginary, which he maintained, is now become an idol.  Time will do nothing for the extinction of this hatred; it will be propagated from age to age; and there is no hope that Aristophanes will ever be treated with tenderness by the disciples of Plato, who made Socrates his hero.  Every body else may, perhaps, confess, that Aristophanes, though in one instance a bad man, may, nevertheless, be a good poet; but distinctions, like these, will not be admitted by prejudice and passion, and one or other dictates all characters, whether good or bad.

As I add my own reasons, such as they are, for or against Aristophanes, to those of Frischlinus, his defender, I must not omit one thing which he has forgot, and which, perhaps, without taking in the rest, put Plutarch out of humour, which is that perpetual farce which goes through all the comedies of Aristophanes, like the character of harlequin on the Italian theatre.  What kind of personages are clouds, frogs, wasps, and birds?  Plutarch, used to a comick stage of a very different appearance, must have thought them strange things; and, yet stranger must they appear to us, who have a newer kind of comedy, with which the Greeks were unacquainted.  This is what our poet may be charged with, and what may be proved beyond refutation.  This charge comprises all the rest, and against this I shall not pretend to justify him.  It would be of no use to say, that Aristophanes wrote for an age that required shows which filled the eye, and grotesque paintings in satirical performances; that the crowds of spectators, which sometimes neglected Cratinus to throng Aristophanes, obliged him, more and more, to comply with the ruling taste, lest he should lose