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. Far from being a vital element in the
action, like the recital of the _Alkestis_, the reading of the _Hercules
Furens_ is an almost gratuitous diversion in the midst of the talk; and
the tameness of a literal (often awkwardly literal) translation is
rarely broken by those inrushes of alien genius which are the glory of