Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/20

 of the cruelty, half believes it a dream, and gladly they resume the journey, until, when Socrates goes to the river to drink, the sponge falls out and with it the last, faint pulse of life. Again, when Thelyphron watches in the chamber of the dead, lest witches should bite off morsels of the dead man's face, and, falling asleep at sight of a weasel, loses his ears and nose, who so callous as to feel no shudder of alarm? But the most terrific apparition of all is the obscene priest of the Syrian Goddess, with his filthy companions carrying the Divine Image from village to village, and clanging their cymbals to call the charitable. This grimy episode, with its sequent orgies, is related with an incomparably full humour which, despite its Oriental barbarity, is unmatched in literature.

Indeed there is scarce a scene without its ghostly enchantment, its supernatural intervention. And herein you may detect the personal predilection of Apuleius. The infinite curiosity wherewith Lucius pries into witchcraft and sorcery was shared by his author. The hero transformed suffered his many and grievous buffetings because he always coveted an understanding of wizardry and spells; and Apuleius, in an age devoted to mysticism, was notorious for a magic-monger. Seriously it was debated, teste St. Augustine, whether Christ or he wrought the greater marvels: and though the shape wherein the romance is cast induced a confusion of author and hero, it is recorded that Apuleius was a zealous magician, and doubtless it is himself, not Lucius, he pictures in his last book among the initiate. In the admirable description of Isis and her visitation, as of the ceremonies wherein he was admitted to the secret worship of the Goddess, he departs entirely from his Greek