head one brow,--
True, the veins swelled, blue net-work, and there surged
A red from cheek to temple, then retired
As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a flame,--
Was never nursed by temperance or health.
But huge the eyeballs rolled black native fire,
Imperiously triumphant: nostrils wide
Waited their incense; while the pursed mouth's pout
Aggressive, while the beak supreme above,
While the head, face, nay, pillared throat thrown back,
Beard whitening under like a vinous foam,
These made a glory, of such insolence--
I thought,--such domineering deity
Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine
For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path
Which, purpling, recognized the conqueror.
Impudent and majestic: drunk, perhaps,
But that's religion; sense too plainly snuffed:
Still, sensuality was grown a rite."

He, too, has just heard of Euripides' death, and an impulse, part
sympathy, part mockery, has brought him to the "house friendly to
Euripides." The revellers retire abashed before Balaustion; he alone
remains. From the extraordinary and only too natural gabble and garbage
of his opening words, he quickly passes to a more or less serious
explanation and defence of his conduct toward the dead poet; to an
exposition, in fact, of his aims and doings as a writer of comedy. When
his "apology" is ended, Balaustion replies, censuring him pretty
severely, making adroit use of the licence of a "stranger" and a woman,
and defending Euripides against him. For a further (and the best)
defence, she reads the whole of the _Herakles_, which Browning here
translates. Aristophanes, naturally, is not convinced; impressed he must
have been, to have borne so long a reading without demur: he flings them
a snatch of song, finding in his impromptu a hint for a new play, the
_Frogs_, and is gone. And now, a year after, as the couple return to
Rhodes from a disgraced and dismantled Athens, Balaustion dictates to
Euthukles her recollection of the "adventure," for the double purpose of
putting the past events on record, and of eluding the urgency of the
present sorrow.

It will thus be seen that the book consists of two distinct parts. There
is, first, the apology of Aristophanes, second, the translation of the
play of Euripides. _Herakles_, or, as it is more generally known,
_Hercules Furens_, is rendered completely and consecutivel