Note 55 — Chapter IX · PLUTUS.

This is a good instance of those jokes “contrary to expectation” (as the Greek term has it) which are very common in these comedies, but which can very seldom be reproduced, for more reasons than one, in an English version. Of course the audience were led to expect something more fragrant than “garlic.” We are accustomed to something of the same kind in the puns which frequently conclude a line in our modern burlesques. In neither case, perhaps, is the wit of the highest order.

Mr Walsh, in the preface to his ‘Aristophanes’ (p. viii), illustrates not inaptly this style of jest by a comparison with Goldsmith’s “Elegy on the Glory of her sex, Mrs Mary Blaize.”