Miss Blimber, the school teacher in Dickens's _Dombey and Son_, could have died happily had she known Cicero. Even if such a thing were possible I should have no great desire to know Cicero, but I should be glad to listen to a lecture by Zeno in the portico of the Poecilé at Athens, or to Epicurus's meditations in his garden. My ignorance of history has prevented me from becoming deeply interested in Greece, although now this begins to embarrass me, as a curiosity about and sympathy for classical art stirs within me. If I were a young man and had the leisure, I might even begin the study of Greek. As it is, I feel that there are two Greeces: one of statues and temples, which is academic and somewhat cold; the other of philosophers and tragedians, who convey to my mind more of an impression of life and humanity. Apart from the Greek, which I know but fragmentarily, I have no great admiration for ancient literatures. The _Old Testament_ never aroused any devotion in me. Except for _Ecclesiastes_ and one or two of the shorter books, it impresses me as repulsively cruel and antipathetic. Among the Greeks, I have enjoyed Homer's _Odyssey_ and the comedies of Aristophanes. I have read also Herodotus, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius. I am not an admirer of academic, well written books, so I prefer Diogenes Laertius to Plutarch. Plutarch impresses me as having composed and arranged his narratives; not so Diogenes Laertius. Plutarch forces the morality of his personages to the fore; Diogenes gives details of both the good and the bad in his. Plutarch is solid and systematic; Diogenes is lighter and lacks system. I prefer Diogenes Laertius to Plutarch, and if I were especially interested in any of the illustrious ancients of whom they write, I should vastly prefer the letters of the men themselves, if any existed, or otherwise the gossip of their tentmakers or washerwomen, to any lives written of them by either Diogenes Laertius or Plutarch. THE ROMAN HISTORIANS When I turned to the composition of historical novels, I desired to ascertain if the historical method had been reduced to a system. I read Lucian's _Instructions for Writing History_, an essay with the same title, or with a very similar one, by the Abbé Mably, some essays by Simmel, besides a book by a German professor, Ernst Bernheim, _Lehrbuch der historischen Methode_. I next read and re-read the Roman historians Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Sallust and Suetonius. _Sallust_ All these Roman historians no doubt were worthy gentlemen, but they create an atmosphere of suspicion. When reading them, you suspect that they are not always telling the whole truth. I read Sallust and feel that he is lying; he has composed his narrative like a novel.