Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/24

 and curtail the redundancy affected by Apuleius, repressing the hyperbolical ostentations of his original, save only when he indulges in exaggerations of his own. When the miserable Thelyphron is protecting a dead man from the witch women, thus does Apuleius, with his admirable sense of words, enhance the horror of crawling minutes: cum ecce crepusculum et nox provecta et nox altior et dein concubia altiora; et jam nox intempesta for which Adlington writes in all brevity 'midnight.' Apuleius again has a dozen fantastical notions of the dawn, and Adlington cuts them all down to the colourless level of 'when morning was come.' Thus even does he reduce so garishly purple a piece of imagery as: Commodum punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum cælum inequitabat. When the thieves return to their den after the sack of Milo's house, and sit them down to revelry, Apuleius surpasses even his own habit of opulent description. Estur ac potatur—thus he writes—incondite pulmentis acervatim, panibus aggeratim, poculis agminatim ingestis. 'Cups in battalions!' 'Tis a pretty conceit, and for Adlington it means no more than 'they drank and eat exceedingly.' But having accustomed you to a chaste severity of language, he will break out suddenly into a decorative passage, for which the Latin gives no warrant. 'Moreover there be divers that will cast off their partlets, collars, habiliments, fronts, cornets, and krippins': thus he turns a perfectly simple sentence—lacinias omnes exuunt, amicula dimovent—proving his quietude of phrase the effect of design rather than of necessity. So also he is wont to clip and crop his author's metaphors. 'While I considered these things' is a withered, nerveless