One MS. of Menander stops here, but another gives us much more of the same kind, dealing with the βασιλικὸς [Sidenote: _Others._] λόγος—flattery of kings—with epithalamia, with consolations, _et cetera_. The general scheme is much the same, and at least does not disincline us to believe it from the same hand. The short treatise of Alexander on Rhetorical Starting-points is very technical and not very profitable; but it falls in with the Menandrine books in showing how this business of flattery—the reducing to system of the “dodges” of the auctioneer or the advertising agent—was, latterly at least, the mainstay of the rhetorician. The two books of Aristides' _Art of Rhetoric_, on the other hand, busy themselves not with the epideictic but with the political speech, and deal chiefly with its technical qualities, our old friends. Apsines deals with the exordium only, and Minucianus with the epicheireme or imperfect rhetorical argument. Between them comes the treatise attributed to Longinus by some, and for that reason, if for no other, worth a little fuller examination. “That[146], so to speak, there is nothing better in man’s possession than memory, who in his senses will deny? Some indeed praise Oblivion, as Euripides— ‘O blessed forgetfulness of woes,’ as he calls it. But I should say that Lethe and the outgoing of memory help us little or nothing, hurt the best and greatest things of life, defraud and keep us short of happiness. For the most hateful of sins and crimes, ingratitude, we find oft occurring when memory’s powers fail; but he who remembers benefits is neither ungrateful nor unjust. When men forget the laws and the doctrines that keep us straight, needs must they become poor creatures, and bad, and shameless. Yea, all folly and all inculture of soul occur through forgetfulness. But he who remembers best is chiefly wise.” Footnote 146: Walz, ix. 570. Aldine, p. 717, and at p. 100 of Egger’s pocket edition of Longinus. Dickens was not much of a lover of the classics, but he would hardly have disdained this as a motto for _The Haunted Man_.