He published more than one poem on the drama of Hellas.

_Aristophanes' Apology_ came out in 1875, and _The Agamemnon of AEschylus_, another paraphrase, in 1877.

All three poems are marked by the same primary characteristic, the fact that the writer has the literature of Athens literally at his fingers' ends.

He is intimate not only with their poetry and politics, but with their frivolity and their slang; he knows not only Athenian wisdom, but Athenian folly; not only the beauty of Greece, but even its vulgarity.
In fact, a page of _Aristophanes' Apology_ is like a page of Aristophanes, dark with levity and as obscure as a schoolman's treatise, with its load of jokes.
In 1871 also appeared _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau: Saviour of Society_, one of the finest and most picturesque of all Browning's apologetic monologues.

The figure is, of course, intended for Napoleon III., whose Empire had just fallen, bringing down his country with it.
The saying has been often quoted that Louis Napoleon deceived Europe twice--once when he made it think he was a noodle, and once when he made it think he was a statesman.