in his extant plays or the fragments of his lost ones. And on this delicate question we have a most unexceptionable witness in his favour—no less a person than the decent and pious Aristophanes himself! The "Phædras" and "Sthenebœas" of Euripides, we are told by him, were dangerous to morals.[1] Yet in another of his comedies he says that in consequence of Euripides's plays women mended their manners.[2] Here, with a vengeance, has "a Daniel come to judgment!"—the woman-hater, it seems, had been preaching with some success to a female congregation. The purity of the poet's morals, so far as they can be inferred from his writings, is displayed in his Hippolytus, in the chaste Parthenopæus in the "Suppliant Women," in the Achilles of his "Iphigenia," and above all, in the character of the boy Ion. "Consecrated to Apollo, and devoting himself wholly to the service of the altar, he speaks of his patron god in language that would not dishonour a better cause. One cannot help feeling that the poet must have been at heart a good man who could make a virtuous asceticism appear in so amiable a light."[3]
"Let me tell you," says Councillor Pleydell, "that Glossin would have made a very pretty lawyer, had he not been so inclined to the knavish side of his profession." It cannot be denied that Euripides has some tendency of the sort. He employs frequently, and seemingly without much compunction, the arts of falsehood and deceit. The tricksters in his tragedy
