Discusses the literary history of Greek comedy, the productions of the plays, their metre and rhythm, and the works of Aristophanes, Menander, Epicharnus, Cratinus, the School of Crates, and Eupolis. "All the greatest poets of Greece committed the same unintended offence: their overwhelming excellence thrust into partial or complete oblivion the merits of their less august fellow-writers. Aristophanes was so unquestionably the finest comic playwright...