would not invalidate the general proposition that, to Libanius also, those who want literary criticism proper need not go. Perhaps the nearest approaches to it are such things as the curious mention to Demetrius (128, Wolf, p. 67) of parts of an artificial epistolary discourse of his friend’s which he, Libanius, received when he had pupils with him, and, after being much bored by their recitations, read to them instead of lecturing himself. The titles at least of his correspondent Themistius[178] are sometimes a little more promising, and Themistius, a man of considerable [Sidenote: _Themistius._] and varied public employment, might seem less likely to indulge in the excesses of mere scholastic exercise which Libanius permitted himself. But, on the whole, we shall have to acknowledge that this other famous rhetorician also is drawn practically blank for our purpose. “The Philosopher,” “The Sophist,” “How a man should address the public”—these are subjects on which one might surely think that a little criticism would break in somehow and somewhere. But it never does. To Themistius, as to so many others, the great writers of old are persons worthy of infinite respect, to be quoted freely, but to be quoted as a lawyer quotes this or that year-book, report, decision, for the substance only. The general banality of his literary references may be tested by anybody who chooses to refer to his citations and discussions of various authors in the _Basanistes_ (Orat. xxi., _ed. cit._ in note, p. 296), or more succinctly still, to the reference to “golden Menander, and Euripides, and Sophocles, and fair Sappho, and noble Pindar” in the pleasant little piece, “To his Father,” which comes before it. Footnote 178: _Orationes_, ed. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1832). Reiske, in a passage quoted at p. xii. of this, rates Themistius as, among other things, _vanus jactator philosophiæ suæ, specie magis quam re cultæ, ineptus et ridiculus vexator et applicator Homeri et veteris historiæ, tautologus et sophista_, &c. On the other hand, Sigismund Pandolf Malatesta, in 1464, carried off his bones from Sparta and buried them magnificently at Rimini as those _Philosophorum sua tempestate principis_. But it was for the Aristotelian _Paraphrases_, apparently, that the lover of Isotta revered Themistius. I have not neglected these (ed. Spengel, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1866), but being exclusively on the logical, physical, and metaphysical works, they yield us little that I can discover. I think Reiske is harsh, but not absolutely unjust.