It comforts me to remember that Aristophanes liked
AEschylus no better than I do. True, he praises him by comparison
with Sophocles and Euripides, but he only does so that he may run
down these last more effectively. Aristophanes is a safe man to
follow, nor do I see why it should not be as correct to laugh with
him as to pull a long face with the Greek Professors; but this is
neither here nor there, for no one really cares about AEschylus; the
more interesting question is how he contrived to make so many people
for so many years pretend to care about him.
Perhaps he married somebody's daughter. If a man would get hold of
the public ear, he must pay, marry, or fight. I have never
understood that AEschylus was a man of means, and the fighters do
not write poetry, so I suppose he must have married a theatrical
manager's daughter, and got his plays brought out that way. The ear
of any age or country is like its land, air, and water; it seems
limitless but is really limited, and is already in the keeping of
those who naturally enough will have no squatting on such valuable
property. It is written and talked up to as closely as the means of
subsistence are bred up to by a teeming population. There is not a
square inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freehold
any part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the
usual way--and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure.
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