Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/17

 Ephesus, who has wandered from Petronius even unto Rabelais? To what admirable purpose is the Sermo Milesius handled in the Decamerone, to which Apuleius himself contributed one delectable tale! Did not the genius of Balzac devise a monument proper to its honourable antiquity in the Contes Drolatiques? And yet the second century was its golden age, and none so generously enhanced its repute as Apuleius. His masterpiece, in truth, is magnificently interlaced with jests, sometimes bound to the purpose of the story by the thinnest of thin threads, more often attached merely for their own or for ornament's sake. But not only thus is he separate from his model. Though he is romantic in style and temper alike—and romanticism is an affair of treatment rather than of material—he never loses touch with actuality. He wrote with an eye upon the realities of life. Observation was a force more potent with him than tradition. If his personages and incidents are wholly imaginary, he could still give them a living semblance by a touch of intimacy or a suggestion of familiar detail. Compare his characters to Lucian's, and measure the gulf between the two! Lucian's Abrœa is a warning voice—that, and no more. Byrrhena, on the other hand, is a great lady, sketched, with a quick perception of her kind, centuries before literature concerned itself with the individual. And is not Milo, the miser, leagues nearer the possibility of life than Hipparchus? Even Palæstra, despite the ingenuity of one episode, is not for an instant comparable in charm and humour to Fotis, most complaisant of serving-maids. Nor is it only in the pourtrayal of character that Apuleius proves his observation. There are many scenes