It is no doubt extremely unjust to argue from the performance of the pupil to the quality of the teacher; but we may at least say that, if there was any stronger critical tendency [Sidenote: _Julian._] in Libanius or Themistius than appears in their own works, it is not reflected in one of their most diligent and distinguished pupils.[179] The references to literature in the extant works[180] of Julian the Apostate are, in a certain sense and way, extremely numerous; in fact, it was almost vital to the odd mixture of dupery and quackery which had mastered him that he should be constantly quoting classical, if only because they were heathen, authors. His _Orations_[181] are crammed with such quotations. Moreover, we have from him a declaration in form of love for books. “Some,” he says, at the beginning of his epistle (the ninth) to Ecdicius,[182] “love horses, some birds, some other beasts; in me from a child there has raged a dire longing for the possession of books.” But in this, as in other cases, Desire seems rather to have excluded Criticism. One is rather annoyed than edified by the banal reference, at the beginning of the _Misopogon_,[183] to his having seen “the barbarians beyond the Rhine singing wild songs composed in a speech resembling the croakings of rough-voiced fowls, and rejoicing in this music.” If only the princely pedant would have copied a few of these croaks, and studied them, instead of trying to put back the clock of the world! His compliments and thanks to Libanius himself for the above-mentioned speech (Ep. 14) are of the most hackneyed character. He read it, he says, nearly all before breakfast, and finished it between breakfast and _siesta_.[184] “Thou art blessed to write thus, and still more to be able to think thus! O speech! O brains! O composition! O division! O epicheiremes! O _ordonnance_! O departures of style! O harmony! O symphony!” To which we may add “O _clichés_! O tickets! O [in Mr Burchell’s rudeness] Fudge!” Footnote 179: I do not know that Julian was in strictness a “pupil” of Themistius, but the tone of the long epistle to him, ed. cit., _inf._, i. 328, is at least half pupillary. Himerius, another contemporary sophist to whom Photius (_v. infra_, p. 183) devotes some attention, was certainly Julian’s tutor. We have some of his work (ed. Wernsdorf, Göttingen, 1790 and later), but I have found little to the present point in this, which is mostly pure epideictic or didactic. Footnote 180: Ed. Hertlein, 2 vols. or parts (Leipsic, 1875-76). Footnote 181: Ed. cit., i. 1-327. Footnote 182: Ibid., ii. 487. The numbers of the epistles will sufficiently indicate the whereabouts of the remaining citations from them.