after it had been taken by Lysander.  Though we consider Aristophanes, as a comick writer who deals in exaggeration, and bring down his stories to their true standard, we still find that the fundamentals of their government fail in almost all the essential points.  That the people were inveigled by men of ambition; that all councils and decrees had their original in factious combinations; that avarice and private interest animated all their policy to the hurt of the publick; that their revenues were ill managed, their allies improperly treated; that their good citizens were sacrificed, and the bad put in places; that a mad eagerness for judicial litigation took up all their attention within, and that war was made without, not so much with wisdom and precaution, as with temerity and good-luck; that the love of novelty and fashion, in the manner of managing the publick affairs, was a madness universally prevalent; and that, as Melanthius says in Plutarch, the republick of Athens was continued only by the perpetual discord of those that managed its affairs.  This remedied the dishonour by preserving the equilibrium, and was kept always in action by eloquence and comedy.

This is what, in general, may be drawn from the reading Aristophanes.  The sagacity of the readers will go farther; they will compare the different forms of government, by which that tumultuous people endeavoured to regulate or increase the democracy, which forms were all fatal to the state, because they were not built upon lasting foundations, and had all in them the principles of destruction.  A strange contrivance it was to perpetuate a state, by changing the just proportion which Solon had wisely settled between the nobles and the people, and by opening a gate to the skilful ambition of those who had art or courage enough to force themselves into the government by means of the people, whom they flattered with protections, that they might more certainly crush them.

4.  THE TRAGICK POETS RALLIED.

Another part of the works of Aristophanes, are his pleasant reflections upon the most celebrated poets.  The shafts which he lets fly at the three heroes of tragedy, and particularly at Euripides, might incline the reader to believe that he had little esteem for those great men, and that, probably, the spectators that applauded him were of his opinion.  This conclusion would not be just, as I have already shown by arguments, which, if I had not offered them, the reader might have discovered better than I. But, that I may leave no room for objections, and prevent any shadow of captiousness, I shall venture to observe, that posterity will not consider Racine as less a master of the French stage, because his plays were ridiculed by parodies.  Parody always fixes upon the best pieces, and was more to the taste of the Greeks than to ours.  At present, the high theatres give it up to stages of inferiour rank; but in Athens the comick theatre considered parody as its principal