characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition. Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces. He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion, verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.-- Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo, Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est Pars hominum, Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, cum Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te Si minu' delectat, quod τεχνίον Isocratium est, Ληρῶδέςque simul totum ac συμμειρακιῶδες, Non operam perdo.[292] We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity of purpose, the formal discourse and illustration of a set topic, which characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace, in his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation. Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form--a form which in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. He employs fables, quotations, and parodies, to illustrate his subject. He gives a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes and incidents at which he was present, such as a fight between two gladiators, a rustic feast, and a storm which he encountered in his voyage to Sicily. In other places he plays the part of a moralist, and discourses to a friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he takes on himself the special office of a censor, and assails the vices of the day by direct denunciation and living examples. In other places he appears as a literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar and orthography. In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of the gods was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to be preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were exposed by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account of the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line-- Mantica cantheri costas gravitate premebat[293]--