Footnote 259: αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ χρησιμώτερός εστιν. Footnote 260: περιεργία. Footnote 261: τήν ἔμφυτον τοῦ λόγου καὶ αὐτοσχέδιον (ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι.) Lucian and the mysterious Lucius of Patræ seem to have occupied him together, and he discusses the authorship of the _Ass_ with some acumen, recognising in Lucian a merely satiric intention, in Lucius a serious belief in magic and marvels. As for Lucian himself (respecting whom he has preserved for us the great epigram quoted above), he acknowledges the universality of the Samosatan’s satire of all things Greek, their god-making and their _Aselgeia_, the extravagances of their poets and their political mistakes, the emptiness and pretentiousness of their philosophy. In fact, says Photius, in an approach at least to the true Higher Criticism, “his whole pains are spent on producing a prose Comedy of Greek things. He himself seems to be one of those who worship nothing seriously; he scoffs and mocks at other’s doxies, but lays down no creed of his own, unless one should say that it is a creed to be creedless. In style he is of the very best, brilliant and classical, and signally distinguished in diction, and of all others a lover of good order and purity, with a clear and symmetrical magnificence. His composition is arranged so that the reader seems not to be reading prose, and as though a very pleasant song, without distinct musical accompaniment, were dropping into the ears of the hearers. And altogether, as we said, his style is of the very best, and ill-matched with the subjects at which he chose to laugh.” Photius is not lavish of the word _aristos_, and it is only fair to say that, for its day and way, this criticism is not far itself from deserving the epithet. After some shorter notices, including a good many of Lexicons (Photius himself, it need hardly be said, was a lexicographer), we come, at Art. 159, to Isocrates, on whom the Byzantine judgment is again noteworthy. He has more, Photius thinks, of the sophist than, like the other Nine, of the actual advocate. “His readers can see at once that he employs a distinct and pure style, and shows a great deal of care about the craftsmanship of his speeches, so that his order and his care overreach themselves a little and become excessive. In fact, this excess of apparatus does not so much provide genuine arguments as tasteless ineptitude.”[262] Footnote 262: τὸ ἀπειρόκαλον, one of the most damaging of Greek critical terms.