The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the fallen angels reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate— Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute— And found no end, in wandering mazes lost, these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_. He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent, sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the _Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods, and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase, 'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy—a rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of 'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and _The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge) of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of _Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the whimsical extravagance (as it