treated from more than one aspect. The choice of dialogue may be accounted for thus; it is true that it would not have availed much if the chooser had not possessed the nimble wit and the endless power of varying the formula which is so astonishing in Lucian; but that it was a matter of importance is proved at once by comparing the _Alexander_ with _The Liar_, or _The dependent Scholar_ with the _Feast of Lapithae_. Lucian's non-dialogue pieces (with the exception of _The True History_) might have been written by other people; the dialogues are all his own. About five-and-thirty of his pieces (or sets of pieces) are in dialogue, and perhaps the greatest proof of his artistic skill is that the form never palls; so great is the variety of treatment that no one of them is like another. The point may be worth dwelling on a little. The main differences between dialogues, apart from the particular writer's characteristics, are these: the persons may be two only, or more; they may be well or ill-matched; the proportions and relations between conversation and narrative vary; and the objects in view are not always the same. It is natural for a writer to fall into a groove with some or all of these, and produce an effect of sameness. Lucian, on the contrary, so rings the changes by permutations and combinations of them that each dialogue is approached with a delightful uncertainty of what form it may take. As to number of persons, it is a long step from the _Menippus_ to the crowded _dramatis personae_ of _The Fisher_ or the _Zeus Tragoedus_, in the latter of which there are two independent sets, one overhearing and commenting upon the other. It is not much less, though of another kind, from _The Parasite_, where the interlocutor is merely a man of straw, to the _Hermotimus_, where he has life enough to give us ever fresh hopes of a change in fortune, or to the _Anacharsis_, where we are not quite sure, even when all is over, which has had the best. Then if we consider conversation and narrative, there are all kinds. _Nigrinus_ has narrative in a setting of dialogue, _Demosthenes_ vice versa, _The Liar_ reported dialogue inside dialogue; _Icaromenippus_ is almost a narrative, while _The Runaways_ is almost a play. Lastly, the form serves in the _Toxaris_ as a vehicle for stories, in the _Hermotimus_ for real discussion, in _Menippus_ as relief for narrative, in the _Portrait-study_ for description, in _The Cock_ to convey moralizing, in _The double Indictment_ autobiography, in the _Lexiphanes_ satire, and in the short series it enshrines prose idylls.