The magnificent portrait of Aristophanes is conceived in the very spirit of the riotous exuberance of intellect and senses-- "Mind a-wantoning At ease of undisputed mastery Over the body's brood"-- which was so congenial to the realist in Browning; "the clear baldness--all his head one brow"-- and the surging flame of red from cheek to temple; the huge eyeballs rolling back native fire, imperiously triumphant, the "pursed mouth's pout aggressive," and "the beak supreme above," "beard whitening under like a vinous foam." [Footnote 59: _Arist.

Ap._, p.

698.] [Footnote 60: Ib., p.

688.] Balaustion is herself the first to recognise the divinity shrouded in this half satyr-like form: in some of the finest verses of the poem she compares him to the sea-god, whom as a child she had once seen peer "large-looming from his wave, * * * * * A sea-worn face, sad as mortality, Divine with yearning after fellowship," while below the surface all was "tail splash, frisk of fin." And when Balaustion has recited her poet's masterpiece of tragic pathos, Aristophanes lays aside the satirist a moment and attests his affinity to the divine poets by the noble song of Thamyris.

The "transcript from Euripides" itself is quite secondary in interest to this vivid and powerful dramatic framework.