The book bears from first to last a strong personal, almost autobiographical, impress; but at the same time it may be said that it is essentially a learned book; the local colour, the archaeological element, is very closely studied, and used, as was ever Pater’s way, in no pedantic fashion, but fused with a perfect naturalism into the story. It is probably, however, true to say that the fact that Pater’s knowledge of Italy was to a great extent superficial helped him to make his picture so clear and vivid; he was always at his best when he was amplifying slender hints and recollected glimpses. Too great a wealth of detailed materials tended, as we shall have occasion to observe in a later book, _Gaston de Latour_, to blur the sharp outline and to interfere with lucid execution. The workmanship of the book is from first to last perfect; if there is a fault, and it may be fairly reckoned a fault, it lies in the introduction of certain rather over-lengthy episodes of translated or adapted passages, such as the story of Cupid and Psyche out of the _Golden Book of Apuleius_, the discourses of the Emperor Aurelius, and the conversation between Lucian and Hermotimus in the fourth part. In themselves they are models of literary grace; but in a connected narrative they are rather as wide trenches dug across the reader’s path. They are felicitous indeed, and in a sense apposite; but just as in the _Arabian Nights_ the device of story within story, like those nests of enamelled Indian boxes, causes a reluctant suspension of thought, so it may be said in _Marius_ that the holding up of the main interest by the introduction of pieces of work on so minute a scale is not justified. It is as though pilgrims on a river, who desire above all things to complete their journey, should be compelled to traverse and explore a backwater, where no amount of beautiful detail reconciles them to the temporary abandonment of their original quest. The art of the writer is perhaps most manifest in the first part, in which there is a delighted, a luxurious zest, hardly maintained in the same evenness throughout. Indeed, in spite of the size of the whole conception, and the perfect craftsmanship displayed, one is tempted to believe that Pater’s real strength was the strength of the essayist rather than of the narrator; a belief in which, as we have seen, he himself concurred. In the first part is brought out with exquisite grace the life of the old Roman villa, buried in the remote countryside, near the sea: the name of the place is White-nights (_Ad Vigilias Albas_). It is half-farm, half-villa; here the lonely boy grows up, with his widowed mother, whose life is but a life of shadowy sentiment consecrated to the memory of the dead.