[Footnote 1: Teachers.]
He then goes on to say of Aristophanes that
he expressed all the moods and figures of what was ridiculous,
oddly. In short, as vinegar is not accounted good till the wine be
corrupted, so jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter
with that beast the multitude. They love nothing that is right and
proper. The farther it runs from reason or possibility, with them
the better it is.
In the latter part of this it is evident that Ben is speaking with a
little bitterness. His own comedies are too rigidly constructed
according to Aristotle's dictum, that the moving of laughter was a fault
in comedy. I like the passage as an illustration of a fact undeniably
true, that Shakespeare's humor was altogether a new thing upon the
stage, and also as showing that satirists (for such were also the
writers of comedy) were looked upon rather as censors and moralists than
as movers of laughter. Dante, accordingly, himself in this sense the
greatest of satirists, in putting Horace among the five great poets in
limbo, qualifies him with the title of _satiro_.
But if we exclude the satirists, what are we to do with Aristophanes?
Was he not a satirist, and in some sort also a censor? Yes; but, as it
appears to me, of a different kind, as well as in a different degree,
from any other ancient.
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