Page:Aristophanes (Collins).djvu/176

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166
ARISTOPHANES.

As to my master, he's within there, sacrificing
A hog and a goat and a ram, full drest, good soul!
But the smoke drove me out—(affectedly)—I cannot stand it.
I'm rather sensitive, and smoke hurts my eyelids.

The happy results of the new administration are further shown in the cases of some other characters who now come upon the scene. An Honest Man, who has spent his fortune on his friends and met with nothing but ingratitude in return, now finds his wealth suddenly restored to him, and comes to dedicate to the god who has been his benefactor the threadbare cloak and worn-out shoes which he had been lately reduced to wear. A public Informer—that hateful character whom the comic dramatist was never tired of holding up to the execration of his audience—has now found his business fail him, and threatens that, if there be any law or justice left in Athens, this god who leaves the poor knaves to starve shall be made blind again. Cario—quite in the spirit of the clown in a modern pantomime—strips him of his fine clothes, puts the honest man's ragged cloak on him instead, hangs the old shoes round his neck, and kicks him off the stage, howling out that he will surely "lay an information." An old lady who has lost her young lover, as soon as under the new dispensation she lost the charms of her money, in vain appeals to Chremylus, as having influence with this reformed government, to obtain her some

    burlesques. In neither case, perhaps, is the wit of the highest order.

    Mr Walsh, in the preface to his 'Aristophanes' (p. viii), illustrates not inaptly this style of jest by a comparison with Goldsmith's "Elegy on the Glory of her sex, Mrs Mary Blaize."