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Updated: June 16, 2025
To Mr. T. Longman C. O., January 31st. I have read Rudd's translation of Aristophanes with a good deal of interest. It is as good as it can possibly be without the slightest gleam of fun or genius. Frere's translations are blazing with both, and that constitutes their charm. Rudd is evidently a worthy, dull man, who administers the Aristophanic champagne as if it were mere brown stout.
One way a brilliant success was certain for Aristophanes; the other and better way failure was possible; and he declined to make the venture of faith. It is with this sense of self-condemnation upon him that he essays his own defence, and it is against this sense of self-condemnation more than against the genius and the methods of Euripides that he struggles.
Have you a mind, quoth Herr Trippa, to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and amply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy, whereof Aristophanes in his Clouds maketh great estimation, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, of old in prime request amongst the Assyrians, and thoroughly tried by Hermolaus Barbarus.
Every character in it is individual and distinct from his neighbour; the language from first to last simple, sensuous, musical. Of this poem Matthew Arnold says: 'It has a breadth, truth, and power which make the famous scene in Auerbach's cellar of Goethe's Faust seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only matched by Shakspeare and Aristophanes.
Then they told him that there was one Aristophanes who was daily engaged in reading through all the books with the greatest enthusiasm and the greatest care. Hence, when the gathering for the contests took place, and separate seats were set apart for the judges, Aristophanes was summoned with the rest, and sat down in the place assigned to him.
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.
The destination is the temple of the god and there sacrifice is performed with the usual accompaniment of song and dance; the whole closing with a banquet and a drinking contest, similar to those in vogue among the German students. Aristophanes has described the scene for us Ach. 1090.
I am far from saying that all Athens listened to Sokrates or understood him: had it been so, the caricature of Aristophanes would have been pointless, and the sublime yet mournful trilogy of dialogues which pourtray the closing scenes of the greatest life of antiquity would never have been written.
The Aetolians lost Amphipolis, and the Acarnanians Leucas, on account of their equivocal behaviour; whereas the Athenians, who continued to play the part of the begging poet in their own Aristophanes, not only obtained a gift of Delos and Lemnos, but were not ashamed even to petition for the deserted site of Haliartus, which was assigned to them accordingly.
It is not coarse a defect which has made prigs at all times, and especially at this time, affect horror at Aristophanes; it is not grim, like that of Swift; it is free from any very strong evidences of its owner having lived at a particular date, such as may be detected by the Devil's Advocate even in Fielding, even in Thackeray.
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