Aristophanes would probably have crowned the ancient tree, with the consolatory observation to the haggard line of long-expectant heirs of the Centenarian, that they live to see the blessedness of coming of a strong stock.  The shafts of his ridicule would mainly have been aimed at the disputants.  For the sole ground of the argument was the old man’s character, and sophists are not needed to demonstrate that we can very soon have too much of a bad thing.  A Centenarian does not necessarily provoke the Comic idea, nor does the corpse of a duke.  It is not provoked in the order of nature, until we draw its penetrating attentiveness to some circumstance with which we have been mixing our private interests, or our speculative obfuscation.  Dulness, insensible to the Comic, has the privilege of arousing it; and the laying of a dull finger on matters of human life is the surest method of establishing electrical communications with a battery of laughter—­where the Comic idea is prevalent.

But if the Comic idea prevailed with us, and we had an Aristophanes to barb and wing it, we should be breathing air of Athens.  Prosers now pouring forth on us like public fountains would be cut short in the street and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters thrust into their mouths.  We should throw off incubus, our dreadful familiar—­by some called boredom—­whom it is our present humiliation to be just alive enough to loathe, never quick enough to foil.  There would be a bright and positive, clear Hellenic perception of facts.  The vapours of Unreason and Sentimentalism would be blown away before they were productive.  Where would Pessimist and Optimist be?  They would in any case have a diminished audience.  Yet possibly the change of despots, from good-natured old obtuseness to keen-edged intelligence, which is by nature merciless, would be more than we could bear.  The rupture of the link between dull people, consisting in the fraternal agreement that something is too clever for them, and a shot beyond them, is not to be thought of lightly; for, slender though the link may seem, it is equivalent to a cement forming a concrete of dense cohesion, very desirable in the estimation of the statesman.

A political Aristophanes, taking advantage of his lyrical Bacchic licence, was found too much for political Athens.  I would not ask to have him revived, but that the sharp light of such a spirit as his might be with us to strike now and then on public affairs, public themes, to make them spin along more briskly.

He hated with the politician’s fervour the sophist who corrupted simplicity of thought, the poet who destroyed purity of style, the demagogue, ‘the saw-toothed monster,’ who, as he conceived, chicaned the mob, and he held his own against them by strength of laughter, until fines, the curtailing of his Comic licence in the chorus, and ultimately the ruin of Athens, which could no longer support the expense of the chorus, threw him altogether on dialogue, and