affectations, his artificialities, his supreme literary consciousness, as it were, slip off him. He becomes spontaneous, natural, primary.

It is the strength and sincerity of his belief that contribute to the story the sense of mystery and the touch of strangeness which are the soul of romance. From the moment when Lucius, riding by night through the hills of Thessaly, hears the grim story of Socrates, the air is heavy with sorcery; it thrills with witchcraft. Since the flight of Medea the country has been the home of Black Magic. There, as Plutarch records, witches are able to bring down the moon herself out of the heavens, and make her their instrument. Every breath that Lucius breathes is laden with spells and enchantments. In Hypata, the midmost town of Thessaly, we almost feel, with the hero, that nothing is really what it seems; that stones and chirping birds, and trees and running water are human beings transformed; that oxen and other dumb beasts might speak and tell strange news. It is quite possible, and even probable, that Apuleius mocks at those who meddled too closely with these dangerous obscurities. But it is none the less true that he himself shared the insatiate curiosity of his hero, Lucius, to explore the mysteries by which we are surrounded.

Apart from the impression of the supernatural atmosphere, The Golden Ass,' in its own class of romantic fiction, is superior to its Greek rivals. But an original story it is not. Its idea, framework, and many of its incidents and details are borrowed, either directly or indirectly, from a Greek work which has perished— The Metamorphoses' of Lucius of Patras. On this lost book is also founded 'The Luciad or the Ass,' once attributed to Lucian of Samosata. Whether Apuleius copied from Lucius or from Lucian is an open question. It is, however, of little consequence. From whatever source Apuleius borrowed his materials, he has so enriched them as to make them his own. A masterhand at telling a story, he narrates episode after episode in the adventures of Lucius in the best and most lively manner of the Italian novelle. The comparison seems less of an anachronism because the fantastic luxuriance of his methods appears to be centuries

removed from the statuesque severity of the classical era. Keenly sensitive to the artistic value of words, he ransacks the spoken and written vocabulary to find vivid picture-making phrases, pushing the elaboration of his style beyond the verge of literary foppishness. His love of colour, heightened, perhaps, by his African parentage, shows itself in the richness and warmth of his pictorial effects; jewels, tissues, marbles glow with variegated and distinctive hues. Both style and colour are appropriate to the romantic story; they harmonise with its incidents. The subject is so bizarre, that it needs a bizarre setting. Incidents, which would appear intolerably fantastic if told with greater restraint and depicted in more subdued tones, lose the effect of extravagance from the gorgeousness of the language and the blaze of colour. By the side of Apuleius, the best of the Greek romancers, Heliodorus, is cold, insipid, and lacking in distinction. Yet the difference between him and his Greek rivals is rather one of quality than of kind. Apuleius brings before us a picturesque group of every degree in social life. But none of his figures is realistic in the same sense as the strongly individualised characters in the 'Satyricon.' Goddess and donkey-boy, high-priest and waiting-woman, the baker's wife and the great lady of a provincial city, are all Euphuists of the second century. All speak the highly ornate and artificial language of the African rhetorician.

The Golden Ass' is, as has been said, borrowed from a Greek original. It is a copy, and often a very close one. But Apuleius is not always content to borrow. He adds innumerable incidents, details, and episodes of his own. Among his longer additions are the story of Socrates and the witches, the tale of the noseless man, the assassination of the wine-skins, the mock trial of the assassin, and the picturesque and vivid description of the worship of Isis. Above all, he has introduced the immortal irrelevance of the story of Cupid and Psyche. It is in the robbers' cave that the crooked old hag, who keeps house for the bandits, tells the tale to solace a captive maiden, and the Ass, 'not standing farre of, was not a litle sory in that I lacked penne and inke to write so worthy a tale.'

The story seems to be, in various forms, one of the

oldest in the world; none is more widely disseminated throughout the human race. Had it been current in Italy at the time of Ovid, he would assuredly have put it to use. Where Apuleius found it, is uncertain. He may have brought it back with him from his Eastern travels; and possibly the suggestion of the jealous sisters that the unseen lover is a serpent may point to its Indian origin. Artistically, the introduction of the story may be a blemish in The Golden Ass.' If so, its beauty more than atones. Apuleius decorates the simple story with all the adornments that his rich fancy suggests. But in his own fashion he tells it exquisitely, with a delicate idealism which is in striking contrast with the coarseness of many other passages. By identifying the unseen lover with Cupid he links the story with mythology. His choice of the name Psyche gives him at once definiteness and symbolical meaning. If in his vivid narrative of episodes in the adventures of Lucius he may be compared with Boccaccio, he may, in his handling of the fairy-story, be contrasted with Hans Andersen. Psyche fails in the test of obedience. She cannot resist the natural impulse to see the face of her unseen lover, the father of her child that is to be. The bride of Love himself, she loses him by her fatal curiosity. As she wanders in search of her lost Cupid, she suffers grievous trials at the hands of his jealous mother. Nature conspires to help her to triumph over the tests. The ants sort into their different kinds the heap of mingled grain. The reed by the water's edge tells her how to win the wool of the golden sheep. The eagle brings her the vessel filled with water from the spring that is guarded by sleepless dragons. Even the tower, from which in her despair she is about to cast herself, finds voice to reveal to her the secret of passing to and from the house of Proserpine. There comes at length a happy ending to her troubles. Reunited to Cupid, pardoned by Venus, she drinks from the hand of Jove himself the cup of immortality.

'The Golden Ass' itself is a story of strange adventures. Consumed by a passion to investigate the miracles of witchcraft, Lucius has travelled to Thessaly as to the Mecca of magic. At Hypata he lodges with the miser Milo and his wife, Pamphile. Their pretty servant,

Fotis, becomes his mistress. One evening Fotis comes running to tell Lucius that Pamphile is preparing to change herself into a bird, in order that she may work her sorceries where she lists. Through a chink of the door at midnight, he watches the witch at her work. First she stripped herself stark naked. Then taking from a chest a box, she rubbed herself with ointment from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, muttering to herself over her lamp, and jerking and shaking her limbs. Presently soft feathers began to clothe her body. Her nose hardened and curved into a beak; her fingers crooked into claws; Pamphile had become an owl. She uttered a screech, made trial of herself by little leaps from the floor, and then in full flight flew through the open window, and was gone. Lucius, eager to attempt the same change, prays Fotis to procure him the ointment. She goes into the witch's chamber and brings him a box from the coffer. He hurries back to his room, rubs himself with the ointment, and is transformed, not into a bird, but into 'a plaine Ass.' Fotis consoles him by telling him that, if he eats a rose, he will recover his human shape. The adversity will endure only for the night; at daybreak she will bring him the roses. He is led to the stable, where he is kicked by his own horse, and cudgelled by his own groom. In the night robbers break into Milo's house, load Lucius with their booty, and drive him up the mountains to their cave. Robbers, in fear of pursuit, forget that an ass will bear his own burden, but not a double load.' Each successive owner through whose hands he passes is equally forgetful. Overladen, overdriven, menaced with mutilation, cruelly beaten, Lucius pays dearly for his curiosity. Bitter experience teaches him that roses do not strew the path of a beast of burden. Unlike Bottom, he is not bewildered by his translation. He clearly understands the nature of the metamorphosis, and how it has happened. His human mind and brain remain. But he has lost the power of human speech, and has not obtained in exchange the tough hide or digestion of the ass. He cannot, like the practical weaver, take kindly to his strange provender, with a good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.' It is his natural craving for human food which, in the end,

secures him the comforts of life, and indirectly procures his restoration to human shape.

The story of the Ass is full of thrills. Never was a robber cave more exciting than that of the Thessalian hills, never a robber captain more chivalrously gallant than Lamathus. There are horrors of every kind. There are passages of indecency copied from the Greek original, and, to the credit of Apuleius, somewhat modified in the process. Intermingled with the polychrome ingredients of the story are many lighter touches. There is humour in the way in which Lucius speaks of himself as 'my ass,' and in the detached attitude which he assumes to the animal whose form he inhabits. He is half-amused at his failure to pronounce the complete formula which would summon all citizens to his aid. His 'O' is sonorously sounded, but 'Cæsar' refuses to be brayed intelligibly. He consoles himself for the length of his ears by the reflexion that they enable him to overhear the whispers of the baker's wife. On the other hand, he forgets them to his undoing. Hidden from the soldiers by the gardener, he peeps slily out of the room in which he is concealed. But his huge shadow on the wall betrays him; and the Ass and his shadow' became a proverb. So also there is comedy in the beginning of the penultimate scene. Passing from owner to owner, the ass has been sold to two brothers, one of whom was the cook, the other the baker, of a wealthy Thessalonian. They stored the dainty food which remained over from their lord's table in the chamber which they shared with the ass. Whenever they were out of the room, he was not so muche a fool, or so very an Asse to leave the deintie meates and grinde my teeth upon harde hey.' The stores of food disappear. At first the puzzled brothers suspected one another of being the thief. But at last, seeing that the ass grew day by day fatter and sleeker, and that his provender lay untouched in the manger, they began to suspect him. They watched, and caught him in the act of devouring their chickens and cheesecakes. Like Tristram Shandy, they hugely enjoy the jest of seeing 'how an ass would eat a macaroon.' But, as they cannot themselves afford to finance the diversion, they call in their master. Highly delighted with the sight, he makes a pet of the four-footed epicure.