On the whole, it may best be said of the Golden-mouthed that, in other circumstances, and if he had cared, he might have made a critic perhaps better than Dionysius, and perhaps not so very far below Longinus; but that, as a matter of fact, neither time, circumstances, nor personal disposition attracted him, save here and there, to the subject. There is another author, not far removed in age from Dion Chrysostom, whom I should be sorry to pass without at least [Sidenote: _Aristides of Smyrna._] as minute an examination. Had we only the notices of him which exist, with a few fragments, there is perhaps no Greek writer from whom it would be reasonable to expect an abundance of literary criticism, of a type almost as startlingly modern as that of Longinus himself, with more confidence than that with which we might expect it from Aristides of Smyrna.[149] Footnote 149: One would not suppose that the later Greek rhetoricians were so fascinating as to be _introuvables_; but this is very nearly the case. Aristides himself is very scarce and very dear. Maximus Tyrius and Themistius refuse themselves to the seeker, except after long waiting; and as for Libanius, Messrs Parker of Oxford inform me that they have for years been vainly searching for a complete copy of Reiske’s edition, while an incomplete one of which they knew was snapped up before I could get it. I can only suppose that the editions which Reiske himself and Dindorf edited, at the end of the last century and early in this, were printed in small numbers, and have been gradually absorbed into public libraries. In these latter I have never myself been able to work, except under compulsion, and then with no comfort. Why Herr Teubner, the Providence of inopulent or leisureless students, has been so slow to come to their help in these cases, I do not know.