[27] Brumoy has mistaken Lucretius for Virgil.

[28] “Morum hujus temporis picturam, velut in speculo, suis in comoediis
     repraesentavit Aristophanes.”  Valckenaer, Oratio de publicis
     Atheniensium moribus.—­Ed.

[29]
  Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
  As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
  Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
  We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 
  Pope’s Essay on Man, ii. 217.

[30] It is not certain, that Aristophanes did procure the death of
     Socrates; but, however, he is certainly criminal for having, in the
     Clouds, accused him, publickly, of impiety.  B.—­Many ingenious
     arguments have been advanced, since the time of Brumoy and Johnson,
     in vindication of Aristophanes, with regard to Socrates.  It has
     been urged, that a man, of the established character of Socrates,
     could not be injured by the dramatic imputation of faults and
     follies, from which every individual in the theatre believed him to
     be exempt; while the vices of the sophists and rhetors, whom
     Aristophanes was really attacking, were placed in a more ludicrous,
     or more odious light, by a mental juxta-position with the pure and
     stern virtue of the master of Plato.  This is very plausible; but it
     may still be doubted, whether the greater part of an Athenian
     audience, with all their native acuteness and practical criticism,
     would, at the moment, detect this subtile irony.  If, indeed, it was
     irony, for still, with deference to great names be it spoken, it
     remains to be disproved, that the Clouds was the introductory step
     to a state-impeachment.  Irony is, at best, a dangerous weapon, and
     has, too frequently, been wielded by vulgar hands, to purposes
     widely different from those which its authors designed.  The
     Tartuffe exposed to the indignation of France, a character, which
     every good man detests.  But, was the cause of religious sincerity
     benefited, by Moliere’s representation of a sullen, sly, and
     sensual hypocrite?  Did the French populace discriminate between
     such, and the sincere professor of christianity?  The facts of the
     revolution give an awful answer to the question.  Cervantes
     ridiculed the fooleries and affectation ingrafted upon knight
     errantry.  Did he intend to banish honour, humanity and virtue,
     loyalty, courtesy and gentlemanly feeling from Spain?  The people
     understood not irony, and Don Quixote combined with other causes,
     to degrade to its present abasement, a land, so long renowned for
     her high and honourable chivalry, for “ladye-love, and feats of
     knightly worth.”  See likewise note on Adventurer, 84, and the
     references there made; and preface to the Idler.—­Ed.