rter; but he confessed, that some
of his fortune was in Egina, which was, probably, the original seat of
his family. He was, however, formally declared a citizen of Athens, upon
evidence, whether good or bad, upon a decisive judgment, and this for
having made his judges merry by an application of a saying of
Telemachus[22], of which this is the sense: "I am, as my mother tells
me, the son of Philip: for my own part, I know little of the matter; for
what child knows his own father?" This piece of merriment did him as
much good, as Archias received from the oration of Cicero[23], who said
that that poet was a Roman citizen. An honour which, if he had not
inherited by birth, he deserved for his genius.

Aristophanes[24] flourished in the age of the great men of Greece,
particularly of Socrates and Euripides, both of whom he outlived. He
made a great figure during the whole Peloponnesian war, not merely as a
comick poet, by whom the people were diverted, but as the censor of the
government, as a man kept in pay by the state to reform it, and almost
to act the part of the arbitrator of the publick[25]. A particular
account of his comedies will best let us into his personal character as
a poet, and into the nature of his genius, which is what we are most
interested to know. It will, however, not be amiss to prepossess our
readers a little by the judgments that have been passed upon him by the
criticks of our own time, without forgetting one of the ancients that
deserves great respect.

8. ARISTOPHANES CENSURED AND PRAISED.

"Aristophanes," says father Rapin, "is not exact in the contrivance of
his fables; his fictions are not probable; he brings real characters
upon the stage too coarsely, and too openly. Socrates, whom he ridicules
so much in his plays, had a more delicate turn of burlesque than
himself, and had his merriment without his impudence. It is true, that
Aristophanes wrote amidst the confusion and licentiousness of the old
comedy, and he was well acquainted with the humour of the Athenians, to
whom uncommon merit always gave disgust, and, therefore, he made the
eminent men of his time the subject of his merriment. But the too great
desire which he had to delight the people, by exposing worthy characters
upon the stage, made him, at the same time, an unworthy man; and the
turn of his genius, to ridicule was disfigured and corrupted by the
indelicacy and outrageousness of his manners. After all, his pleasantry
c