spin a web in the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, which was done in an instant, and made a plain champaign, upon which the foot forces were planted." Truly a very Colossus of falsehood, but Lucian's ingenuity is inexhausted and inexhaustible, and the mighty Whale is his masterpiece of impudence. For he "contained in greatness fifteen hundred furlongs"; his teeth were taller than beech-trees, and when he swallowed the travellers, he showed himself so far superior to Jonah's fish, that ship and all sailed down his throat, and happily he caught not the pigmy shallop between his chops. And the geographical divisions of the Whale's belly, and Lucian's adventures therein, are they not set down with circumstantial verity? Then there is the episode of the frozen ship, and the sea of milk, with its well-pressed cheese for an island, which reminds one of the Elizabethan madrigal: "If there were O an Hellespont of Cream." Moreover, the verisimilitude is enhanced by a scrupulously simple style. No sooner is the preface concerning lying at an end than Lucian lapses into pure narrative. A wealth of minutely considered detail gives an air of reality to the most monstrous impossibility; the smallest facts are explicitly divulged; the remote accessories described with order and impressiveness; so that the wildest invention appears plausible, even inevitable, and you know that you are in company with the very genius of falsehood. Nor does this wild diversity of invention suggest romance. It is still classic in style and shape; not a phrase nor a word is lost; and expression, as always in the classics, is reduced to its lowest terms. But when the travellers reach the Islands of the Blessed, the style takes on a colour and a beauty which it knew not before. A fragrant air breathed upon them, as of "roses, daffodils, gillyflowers, lilies, violets, myrtles, bays, and blossoms of vines." Happy also was the Isle to look upon: ἔνθα δὴ καὶ καθεωρῶμεν λιμένας τε πολλοὺς περὶ πᾶσαν ὰκλύστους καὶ μεγάλους, ποταμούς τε διαυγεῖς ἐξίοντας ἠρέμα ἐς τὴν θάλατταν· ἔτὶ δὲ λειμῶνας καὶ ὕλας καὶ ὄρνεα μουσικὰ, τὰ μὲν πὶ τῶν ἠΐόνων ἄδοντα, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν κλάδων ἀήρ τε κοῦφος καὶ εὔπνους περιεκέχυτο τὴν χώραν: "a still and gentle air compassing the whole country." Where will you find a more vivid impression of elegance and serenity? or where match "the melody of the branches, like the sound of wind instruments in a solitary place" (ἀπὸ τῶν κλάδων κινουμένον τερπνὰ καὶ συνεχῆ μέλη ἀπεσυρίξετο ἐοικότα τοῖς ἐπ' ἐρημίας αὐλήμασι τῶν πλαγίων αὐλῶν)? And when the splendour of the city breaks upon you, with its smaragdus, its cinnamon-tree, its amethyst, ivory, and beryl, the rich barbarity suggests Solomon's Temple, or the City of the Revelation. Its inhabitants are the occasion of infinite jesting, and again and again does Lucian satirize the philosophers, his dearest foes. Socrates was in danger of being thrust forth by Rhadamanthus, ἤν φλυαρῇ καὶ