by Meleager.
Originally published in Temple Bar (Ward and Lock) vol.1 #4 (Mar 1861).
Part II.
Parody, according to modern notions, is so handy a vehicle of ridicule, that it is a matter of some surprise that the ancients have not left us more remains of that kind of composition. The lively Athenians, whose wit spared nobody, and whose acquaintance with the works of their most popular writers was derived from hearing rather than reading, might have been expected to take great pleasure in any thing which tickled their ears by the apparent recurrence of familiar sounds and cadences, while continually baffling expectation by some novel application to familiar life of formulas hitherto appropriated to serious subjects. As their wit comprehended every species, from the gravest and most delicate irony down to the lowest buffoonery, we cannot suppose that they despised parodies; we should be rather inclined to suspect that they wrote them, but that few or none have come down to modern times. De Quincey remarks, in one of his essays, on the courage which must have been possessed by the man who first wrote in prose—every thing up to that time having had a poetical, or at least metrical, form; and we may extend the observation to parody, which must have required a sort of intellectual leap for its primary perpetration. We find at the present day that many persons, putting aside those who despise it as a low form of humour, are quite unable to derive any enjoyment from this sort of facetiousness; and probably nine-tenths of those who repeat or allude to Canning's Needy Knifegrinder do so without knowing that it is a parody at all. We do not recollect that Aristotle, whose piercing glance scarcely any thing escaped, has any where described or defined parody; and it is possible that in his day it was not recognised as a distinct form of literature, or if noticed was confounded with burlesque, with which it has so close an affinity. The true notion of a parody, as we now conceive it, is that of the form and style of a serious and well-known work, appropriated to something familiar to our daily experience, such as may be read in the newspapers. Judged by this test, no composition of ancient times exactly comes up—or down—to the mark. The only considerable poetical piece of the kind that has reached us is the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, popularly attributed to Homer; but of which it is quite impossible to suppose him the real author. A mock-heroic poem is, in the first place, alien to the spirit we suppose to have prevailed in the times when the Rhapsodists were welcome guests; and one which speaks of "writing tablets" and of the "exaction of usury," and has some passages, quite in the Aristophanic vein, of comic disrespect to the Olympian deities, is most probably a production of some Athenian littérateur contemporary with the great dramatists and comic poets. After all, however, it is not what we should now call a parody, any more than we do Pope's Rape of the Lock; it is rather a burlesque, in which epic forms of expression are applied to a trifling subject, as in Addison's Latin poem on the Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies.
Lucian, who comes near to the moderns in so many respects, comes nearer to them in regard to his taste for parody, or something like it, than any other Greek writer. We have seen that in all probability his Enchanted Ass was a burlesque on the work of a predecessor; to which we may imagine it bears the same relation that Don Quixote (putting apart the real nobility of the hero's character) does to the romances of chivalry. In the True Histories, which we next take up, Lucian's object is slightly different. One of his best works is one entitled, On the proper way of writing History; and in this he of course insists strongly on veracity as one of the main qualifications of the historian. It must of course be remembered, that the Greek word Historia has not exactly the same meaning as its English representative. The Greeks always thought of the historian as an inquirer, who went about searching into the different accounts given of events, rather than as a man in a library with all manner of books before him, which he sifts and compares. In the latter case, since readers are able to go to the authorities and verify them, it would scarcely answer to invent or to be very unveracious; what the writer now requires is sound judgment to appreciate conflicting evidence. In the former case, he went perhaps to a foreign country to make his inquiries, and when he came back might say what he liked. It was for a long time thought that Herodotus had availed himself to the full of this traveller's license, and only later researches have vindicated his trustworthy character. Lucian, like some others of the ancients, did not put much faith in the Halicarnassian, or indeed in any body except Thucydides, whose style he imitated, and the earnestness of whose character seems to have awed his levity into reverence. After teaching us how history should be written, Lucian next presents the reader with an example of "How not to do it," with an irony similar in character to that which pervades Swift's Directions to Servants, though less gravely veiled than was the habit of the Dean of St. Patrick's.
A burlesque narrative of this kind seems in Lucian's time to have been a sufficiently novel attempt to induce him to write an explanatory preface, which rather spoils the fun of the thing in our point of view. For the credit of Lucian as a humorist, one would be glad to imagine that the book was at first published alone, and that the preface was added when it was found to be misunderstood; but we cannot conscientiously say that there is a spark of evidence to warrant such a supposition. Those who wished their friends to enjoy the True Histories probably used to advise them to skip the first page, that their pleasure might not be spoilt by their being told where they ought to laugh. It is one thing to be ironical, it is another thing to say beforehand that you mean to be so. The latter procedure is something like holding up a glass of champagne before a man, and withholding it till he has seen the last bubble burst upon its surface. After having informed the reader that he hopes to join the useful and the amusing, Lucian goes on gravely to state that he prides himself not only on the air of veracity with which he tells fibs, but on the fact that each fib contains an allusion to some one or other of the poets, historians, and philosophers who have told similar stories; but he does not mention their names, because they will naturally occur to the reader. But if so, why mention the fact at all? Surely the reader, if he knew the historian, could make the application for himself; and if he did not, the knowledge that there was some latent allusion in each case would not be of much service to him. He mentions, however, three writers—Ctesias, Iambulus, and Homer. Ctesias has been given up by modern criticism, and Iambulus we know nothing at all about. A modern reader also wonders why Homer—or, for that matter, any poets—should be placed in this category? Who ever supposed them even to pretend that they were telling the truth? The only humorous remark, in fact, in this preface, is to the effect that Lucian is more honest than the objects of his satire; for he tells at least one truth in confessing that he lies. "Accordingly," he proceeds, "I hereby declare that I sit down to write what never befell me; what I neither saw myself, nor heard by report from others; what is more, about matters that not only are not, but never will be, because they are absolutely impossible: and I hereby warn my readers not to attach the smallest amount of credit to any thing I lay before them."
Once upon a time, the supposed traveller and historian tells us, wishing to find out where the western ocean ends, and what there is beyond it, he set sail from Cadiz with fifty companions. The first thing that happened was a storm, which drove him about for seventy-nine days. At last he reached an unknown coast, where he immediately made a notable discovery—two rusty brazen pillars, inscribed with the names of Bacchus and Hercules, and two footmarks, one of about an acre in size, the other rather smaller. A much more convincing proof of Bacchus having visited the spot was afforded by a river of wine, which, on being traced to its source, was found to originate in the droppings of a large vineyard. There were plenty of fish in the river, but they were so impregnated with it, that all who ate them became drunk. The next marvel was another vineyard, consisting at the root of trees, but terminating above in women, after the fashion of the pictures of Daphne when her transformation is half complete. Their fingers ended in bunches of grapes, and they had tendrils and leaves growing over their heads instead of hair. It was found that it hurt them to try and pull off the grapes; but as they could be kissed, which, being able to talk and making no remonstrance, it was supposed they did not object to, and as this kissing produced all the symptoms of alcoholic intoxication, of course it answered the purpose as well, if not better. Jack ashore being the same in all ages, and not often finding his lass and his grog in such convenient combination, with, above all, nothing to pay, laboured in this vineyard with much assiduity; and two of the sailors became so involved with the tendrils of their respective Pollys, that they were obliged to be left behind. The rest of the crew—taking with them a good supply from the river—set sail, but were forthwith caught by a whirlwind, which, after lifting their vessel several miles high in the air, kept it there altogether, and carried it on among the clouds for a whole week. At the end of this time they reached a large island in the air—in fact, the moon. It was inhabited by men who rode upon three-headed vultures, and governed by Endymion, whom Diana had left there after taking him from Latmos. Endymion, being at war with the inhabitants of the sun (of which Phaeton was king), who were trying to prevent his colonising the vacant territory of the morning star, proposed to the crew to take them into his service, and at once furnished them with vultures out of his own stables. The army consisted of all sorts of absurd compound animals, and, says the narrator, "it was reported that five thousand horse-cranes were to be sent us from Cappadocia; but I must own that I did not see them, and for this plain reason, that they never came. I shall not, therefore, try to describe them, for all sorts of amazing and incredible things were propagated about them." The army did not fight exactly in the air; for a large species of spider, peculiar to the moon, had been ordered to fill up the space between it and the morning star with a cobweb, which made an excellent floor for the combatants. The signal being given by asses (which in those regions are used as trumpeters), both sides engaged with much fury and fluctuating success. So many were killed, that the clouds were tinged with the blood, as they appear sometimes at sunset, and the sanguinary tide rained down from them upon the earth. The moon-party were at first victorious, and set up two trophies; but a reinforcement to the other side unexpectedly arrived, in the shape of cloud-centaurs, who turned the fortunes of the day altogether, routed the Moonites, and having made the narrator and his friends prisoners, tied their hands behind their backs with a bit of cobweb, and took them off to the sun. Phaeton did not besiege his adversary's capital, but contented himself with building a wall between it and his own luminary, which reduced the unfortunate moon to a state of total eclipse. Endymion was obliged to submit, and send a deputation to get the wall taken down and peace made, and, on an exchange of prisoners, wished the travellers to stay with him; but they preferred returning to earth.
The customs of the Moonites were curious. They had no women, nor even a name for such beings, and the species was continued by what modern science would call "fissiparous gemmation;" when a gentleman had a child, it grew in the calf of his leg, and was removed at the proper time by means of the lancet. People did not die—they exhaled like smoke in the air; a termination naturally to be expected from people who never ate any thing. What they lived upon was the steam of roast frogs (which flew about in great numbers), and on the dew which they squeezed out of the atmosphere. Their ideas on beauty were singular, baldness being thought most attractive, though a fine curling head of hair was (as we might expect) very fashionable in the comets, "as travellers who have been well received there assert." By way of making up for this defect, the Moonites had tails consisting of cabbages, which were always green and flourishing, and did not break off, even if the owner happened to fall on his back. They had no pockets, but put every thing they wanted to carry into their own interior, which was hairy within, and capable of containing children who might happen to feel cold. They could take their eyes in and out, and sometimes lost them, so that, if poor, they were obliged to borrow some one else's; the rich, however, generally kept a good stock of spare ones to guard against such contingencies.
After being hospitably dismissed and seeing some other curiosities,—among them was the city of Cloud-cuckoo-town (Nephelococcygia), "which shows," says the historian, "that the veracious Aristophanes has been unjustly discredited,"—they were gently dropped down on the sea. No sooner had they arrived there, than they were swallowed by a huge whale, three hundred miles long, with teeth so large that their vessel slipped between them without being crunched, and with so much room inside him that he carried about a complete microcosm of the exterior world, with fields, rivers, mountains, valleys, and trees, and with inhabitants; some of whom had spent more than twenty years in this wonderful retreat. These were of various kinds: some were men who had been swallowed, some (apparently a cross-breed, or perhaps natives) were crab-faced, others like weasels. The human beings were rather bullied by the rest, and had to pay one nation an annual black-mail of some forty dozen oysters. The new comers offered to assist them, and, after a good deal of fighting, gained the victory. Their next anxiety was to contrive some means of getting out, to which end they first attempted to dig their way through the creature's side; but finding this an endless affair, set fire to the forest, which, after it had burnt for a week, began to make the monster very ill. For fear he should die and shut them up altogether, they seized the opportunity of a yawn to gag him with a large mass of timber, and having effected this sailed out. The next thing that happened to them was to be frozen up; the ice was so deep that there was no chance of sailing out, and they were obliged to dig up the fish embedded in the ice wherever they happened to be. When a thaw came, they proceeded onwards, and soon came into a sea of milk surrounding an island composed entirely of cheese, on which they lived during their stay, and shortly after to another island of cork, inhabited by people capable of walking on the water. Not far from this they came to another very beautiful island, which turned out to be that of the Blessed, where they found Rhadamanthus holding his court in regular form. He had just decided that Ajax was to go through a course of hellebore before being admitted to the full privileges of the place, and was then settling the question of precedence between Alexander and Hannibal. The place had every thing that was pleasant: spring was perpetual; no one ever grew old; the rivers ran with honey, oil, milk, and wine; and the trees bore, instead of leaves, glass goblets, which on being broken off immediately filled themselves with some agreeable kind of tipple. Here were to be met most of the ancient heroes,—the younger Cyrus, Lycurgus, and Socrates, the latter of whom kept up his old habit of irony. Plato was not there, for he resided in a republic of his own contrivance; Diogenes was, and had so changed his ways, as to have taken to wife the too famous Lais. Homer was one of the most prominent persons, and had the pleasure (?) of hearing his own verses sung on all occasions. In answer to several questions by the historian, he stated that he did not belong to either of the seven cities which claimed him, but was a Babylonian; that all the verses in his works usually thought spurious were genuine; that he wrote the Iliad first, and that he began it with the word "Wrath" just because it happened to come into his head at the time. That he could see as well as any body was evident; so there was no occasion to ask that.
During the travellers' stay Pythagoras returned from his seventh and last transmigration; the only difficulty now was to know by which of his seven names to call him. Empedocles also appeared, with his body completely roasted and all over blisters, from having thrown himself into Etna; but he was not admitted. Shortly afterwards the inhabitants of the infernal regions broke loose, and, under the command of the shade of the tyrant Phalaris, attempted to invade the Elysian territory; they were repulsed by Achilles, Ajax, and Socrates, and taken back to have their punishments doubled. The fight was sung by Homer, who gave the historian a copy of his verses to take home; but he unfortunately lost it. The victory was celebrated by a great supper, composed entirely of boiled beans, which every body enjoyed except the unfortunate Pythagoras, who still retained his aversion to that vegetable, and was therefore obliged to sit apart in a state of Elysian starvation.
The travellers had had leave to stay seven months, but their stay was cut short through that Helen. We don't know what business she had in the Elysian fields at all; but there she was, and had not forgotten the lessons of Paris, though she had those of the Trojan war. She sat opposite the son of the traveller's pilot every day at supper for some time, and treated him with so much "affable gladness," that he proposed to elope with her; to which, having had no fun for several centuries, she consented. The lovers set out for either the "Cheese" or the "Cork Island" (than the former of which there are, doubtless, worse places); but a vessel sent in pursuit brought them back in an extremely crestfallen state. Poor Helen wept bitterly, and blushed, and hid her face with her veil—no doubt internally resolving to be sharper on the next occasion; her audacious mortal lover and his accomplices were scourged with mallows, and sent to the place of the wicked. The rest of the crew were ordered off, lest further mischief should ensue; but the historian, who had much enjoyed his stay, was consoled at departure by being shown the "sofa stall, reserved and numbered," which he was to occupy on his ultimate return in a disembodied state. On leaving, Homer composed for him a couple of verses; and Ulysses, when Penelope was not looking, slipped into his hand a letter for Calypso, whose island he was sure to pass on his way home.
Before quitting the enchanted sea, the travellers sailed near the abodes of the wicked, and landed on one of their islands, where they saw many "people they had met," among them all the unveracious historians; on a certain escape from whose fate the narrator congratulated himself,—"since," says he, "I am not conscious of having told one lie." Leaving this dismal region, they arrived at the Island of Dreams, which seemed to recede as they approached; but at length reaching it, they were hospitably entertained by the Dreams, which flew about like bats in a highly ornamental form, and wafted them to all sorts of places during the space of a month.
On coming near Ogygia, the historian thought of delivering the letter of Ulysses to Calypso, but first broke it open and read it. It was as follows:
"Ulysses to Calypso, greeting.—I avail myself of this favourable opportunity to inform you, that soon after my departure from your coasts in the little vessel I put together myself, I had the ill-fortune to be wrecked, and owe the preservation of my life entirely to Leucothea, who conveyed me to the shore of Pheacia, from whence I got home, where I found my wife besieged by a crowd of suitors, who were revelling luxuriously at my expense. I killed them all; but was afterwards put to death by Telegonus, and now reside in the Island of the Blessed, where I have leisure enough to repent of leaving the pleasant life I led with you, and rejecting the immortality you offered me. As soon, therefore, as I can find an opportunity, I will endeavour to escape hence and return to you.
"P.S. Give the bearer a kind reception."
The letter was duly delivered, and the goddess, who was sitting at her loom as usual, cried a good deal on first reading it, but entertained the travellers handsomely, and was very particular in her inquiries about Penelope,—was she really good-looking still, and, above all, was she really such a paragon of virtue as Ulysses had reported? The discreet historian gave, he says, "such answers as he thought would please her best."
The remaining adventures—parodies on the Lestrygons and Sirens—are of no great interest, and contain only two points which show much ingenuity. In sailing home the voyagers arrive at a fissure in the water analogous to a chasm in the earth, down which the ship would have fallen, as if off a precipice, if they had not struck sail. Over it, however, they discovered a bridge made of water, which enabled them to pass. In unmasking the Sirens, one of them, who has been bound, converts herself, like Proteus, into water. A sword being thrust into the water, it immediately turns into blood; an incident which reminds us of the dénouement of several modern vampire stories.
The reader will have remarked in the above narrative one or two passages to which modern writers may possibly have been indebted. There is a sort of general resemblance to Lucian's fiction in that very amusing book of Captain Marryat's, The Pacha of Many Tales; where an incident something like that of the whale occurs, and where the voyagers are frozen up in an iceberg. The modern novelist, however, has improved on his model, if his model it was,—his iceberg is carried down the Maëlstrom, and after passing through a secret passage in the earth, revisits day somewhere near, Jamaica, where the tropical heat soon melts it and releases its prisoners. The fish in the river of wine, which become so saturated with it as to intoxicate those who eat them, is improved upon by the same author in Peter Simple (?), where some one tells a story of a friend who kept a pond full of live pickled salmon, which had been brought to that pass by gradual and constant additions of fennel, peppercorns, and vinegar to their natural element. The "fierce fiery warriors that fight upon the clouds" may have suggested to Tennyson the lines in Locksley Hall, where he describes the effect of a battle of balloons:
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue."
And it is rather curious that Lucian should have coincided with one of the freaks of nature in describing, though as an impossible marvel, what we see actually realised in the structure of the kangaroo. The flying-island will not have failed to recall the Laputa of Swift, who, probably, was indebted to the story in general for the first idea of his Gulliver.
Another little book of Lucian's, of much the same character, is called Icaromenippus; or, a Voyage to the Moon. The name is a combination of Icarus, the son of Dædalus, and Menippus, the satirical cynic philosopher, one of Lucian's pet aversions. The latter having fitted Lucian with a wing of an eagle and another of a vulture, takes him up to the moon, where, as in the former work, he meets the unfortunate Empedocles, who has his usual appearance of being "thoroughly done," and cannot find any body who will take him in. From the moon the earth, all its inhabitants, and their goings on are discovered, as in Le Sage's tale of the Devil on Two Sticks; but nothing very witty comes of it. The travellers are charged by Luna with a message to Jupiter. She complains of men for asserting that her light is only borrowed, and threatens, if they libel her powers in that way, she will tell all she knows about them; and that, as she says, almost in the words of Byron, is not to their credit:
"there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business in a wicked way
On which three single hours of moonshine smile."
But, she continues, she does not look "so modest all the while;"—she is obliged to "hide her light from the heavens at night, and weep behind the clouds," as she subsequently did over that sad affair of Eveleen's Bower.
They promise to do justice to her message, and fly up to the court of Jupiter, where, after Mercury has taken in their names, they are admitted, The king of gods and men receives them very civilly, and asks what the price of wheat is down below, and whether the farmers think they have had the proper amount of rain. After some desultory conversation, he becomes very unpleasant in his remarks on the human species, who, he says, are beginning to neglect him under the bad teaching of the philosophers, who persuade them that the gods "lie beside their nectar, careless of mankind;" and if we don't care about mankind, he says, they will see that there is nothing to be got from us, and then they will leave off sacrifices; and then what are we to do? However, business must go on, and so he proceeds to his audience-chamber, in the floor of which are two holes covered with trap-doors. On their being opened, a swarm of petitions fly up, of the most contradictory character, some of which are granted, some refused, some "stand over," and others are dispersed by the wind on their way.
In the amusing little piece called Micyllus, or the Cock, a somewhat similar machinery is employed. Micyllus is a cobbler, who, while dreaming one night that he has inherited all the property of a rich neighbour, is awoke by his cock, which—or who—articulates his crowing into intelligible speech. They converse, and the cock tells Micyllus that he (the cock) was once a man—in fact he was Pythagoras, and of course also Euphorbus.[1] "If you have been Pythagoras, how is it I have often seen you eat beans?" "The Pythagorean system," replies the cock, "does not apply to me except in my human form. After that I was one of the emmets, which, Herodotus tells us, dig gold in Asia." "Why didn't you bring some gold here?" says his master; "it would have been very acceptable. But before you go further, tell me about the affair of Troy. Was it really as Homer relates it?" "Certainly not," says the cock; "how should Homer have known? he was at that time a camel in Bactria. After being Pythagoras," he continues, "I became Aspasia." "What!" says Micyllus, "can one become a woman?" "Yes, you will be one some day. I have also been Crates, the cynic philosopher. I have been a king, a beggar, a Persian satrap, a horse, a jay, and a frog; but I have been a cock oftenest, for I prefer that sort of life, and indeed the life of any animal to that of man; for I always, when I am a brute, confine myself to my natural wants; but when I am a man, I eat and drink too much, and am sure to make a beast of myself."
The cock then takes Micyllus for a short aërial voyage, to see how his neighbours are employed. A visit to the homes of two misers teaches him that wealth does not make people happy, though, on seeing that of his neighbour whose heir he dreamt he had been, he cannot avoid saying, with a sigh, "All that was lately mine!" But the cock shows him that his neighbour's wife, family, and servants are such a plague to him, that he is by no means an enviable character; and the cobbler becomes on the whole consoled, and resolves for the future to stick to his last, and dream as little as he can.
One of the most amusing pieces of Lucian, and one which, even allowing for its probable exaggeration, throws a good deal of light on the state of popular credulity in his time, is the one called Philopseudes, or the "Lie-fancier." It is in the form of a dialogue. Tychiades describes to a friend that he has been visiting a rich gentleman named Eucrates, at whose house he found an assembly of what we should now call spiritualists, each of whom had some extremely marvellous story to relate, all most perfectly authenticated. One of them begins by mentioning his receipt for sammoning ghosts, which is by taking up the tooth of a weasel with the left hand, and laying it on a piece of lion's skin newly drawn off. Another relates how a certain Babylonian treated a field much as St. Patrick is said to have treated Ireland, when he undertook to "bother all the vermin;" he walked round it three times with a torch, pronounced seven names out of an old book, and drove out all the serpents—whose names and number it seems he accurately knew; for, having called them over, he found that there was still missing one old dragon, who, probably from age and infirmity, thought he might stay. However, the Babylonian was not to be put off in this way, and sent the youngest snake to have him out, and then the whole brood were burnt amid great rejoicings.
Several other remarkable experiences are told. One guest says he used to disbelieve such things, but, after having seen a certain Hyperborean (medium?) float in the air, he became a convert. Another says that a friend of his was enamoured of a lady named Chrysis, and applied to a necromancer, who, on the receipt of four minæ (about twelve guineas), uttered such powerful spells, that she was brought by some species of unaccountable attraction to meet her lover. "Four minæ was rather extravagant," says Tychiades; "in fact, the necromancer might have been dispensed with altogether; for, such is the effect of gold upon the fair creature in question, that, for half-a-guinea, she would follow you to the Hyperboreans themselves." Tychiades is "put down" as a brutal scoffer, and another of the party describes a walking statue of his acquaintance, which is in the habit of perambulating the house and bathing occasionally; and has been known to punish a servant who stole some money which had been placed as an offering in its lap. He also knows a bronze statue of Hippocrates, which, if ever his lamp is let out, gives notice of the omission by rattling all the crockery in the house till it is lighted afresh.
In this work we meet with—we will not say the original, for nobody knows how far back that may go, but the oldest version we know, of two stories, one of which has somehow become appropriated to mediæval legend, while the other has become a typical nucleus of a large class of ghostly narratives. The host mentions as a crowning feat the performance of a certain Pancrates, an Egyptian,—"at whom," he adds, parenthetically, "you know the crocodiles used to wag their tails as he passed,"—and who, by pronouncing a few words over a broomstick, or any other domestic article, converted it into an obedient slave, which would fetch water, or do any thing it was told. A pupil of the conjuror listened and learnt the spell, and put it in practice on the first opportunity; but he had omitted to learn the way to make the thing quiet, and so it went on fetching water, as it does in the Ingoldsby Legend, till the unfortunate pupil repented of his curiosity.
The other story is that of a map who says he himself is a noted exorcist, and that he has performed more cures on haunted houses than any man of his time.
We are not giving an account of Lucian except as a writer of fiction, and we therefore pass over several works which are amusing to read, and which exhibit both his wit and his good sense in perhaps a stronger light than any we have analysed. Perhaps his best work on the whole is one of the serious ones,—On those who are hired to live in the houses of the wealthy,—which describes the kind of life which was led by the unhappy class of men who, instead of devoting themselves to any trade or profession, preferred to attach themselves to the households of great people as a sort of "led captains," and who of course had to endure all the humiliations which usually beset the dependant in an anomalous position. The mortifications which this species of parasite undergoes exceed, in Lucian's account, any which the most ill-used governesses have to submit to in the most intense novels of the "Jane Eyre" school; and the humour with which Lucian portrays some of them makes us regret that he did not undertake a novel descriptive of the "Vanity Fair" of his time. One cannot help thinking that Lucian did not make the most of his powers. A great deal of it is wasted on detached essays, which if brought together into one work would have made it a masterpiece. Many of the Dialogues of the Dead, for example (of which, as they are so well known, we have here said nothing), would have enlivened the True Histories in the part where the narrator describes the Island of the Blessed; and the inventiveness and observation shown in the burlesque adventures of Lucius show that he might have written a story embodying the manners of his society with remarkable success. There is no occasion, however, to insist such drawbacks. Lucian will ever remain the most amusing of ancient authors; and even if we see reason to regret that he does not at times show more appreciation of the serious side of life, we owe him many thanks for his candid exposure of a state of society, from the corruptions of which Europe was delivered by the infusion of a healthier race and the morality of a purer religion.
In the next part we shall give some account of the writers who may be called the romantic novelists—Iamblichus, Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius.
1. Pythagoras used to say he had been Euphorbus at the siege of Troy.
Note. Those who wish to know more of Lucian are recommended to look at the excellent acount by (we lament to say, the late) Dr. Donaldson in the Literature of Greece, chap. 54. There is no very good modern translation of Lucian. We are surprised that Mr. Bohn has not yet included it in his series.