say, dost thou not adore and prize
The illustrious and rich black pudding?
How the rogue tickles!
It must contain spices.
How it is stuffed with pine nuts!

* * * * *

But listen to a subtle hint.
You did not put a lamp there?
How is it that I appear to see two?
But these are foolish questions,
Already know I what it must be:
It is by this black draught
That the number of lamps accumulates.

[The several courses are ended, and the jovial diner resolves to finish
his story.]

And now, Isabel, as we have supped
So well, and with so much enjoyment,
It appears to be but right
To return to the promised tale.
But thou must know, Sister Isabel,
That the Portuguese fell sick . . .
Eleven o'clock strikes, I go to sleep.
Wait for the morrow.

ALCIPHRON

(Second Century A.D.)

BY HARRY THURSTON PECK

In the history of Greek prose fiction the possibilities of the
epistolary form were first developed by the Athenian teacher of
rhetoric, Alciphron, of whose life and personality nothing is known
except that he lived in the second century A.D.,--a contemporary of the
great satirical genius Lucian. Of his writings we now possess only a
collection of imaginary letters, one hundred and eighteen in number,
arranged in three books. Their value depends partly upon the curious and
interesting pictures given in them of the life of the post-Alexandrine
period, especially of the low life, and partly upon the fact that they
are the first successful attempts at character-drawing to be found in
the history of Greek prose fiction. They form a connecting link between
the novel of pure incident and adventure, and the more fully developed
novel which combines incident and adventure with the delineation of
character and the study of motive. The use of the epistolary form in
fictitious composition did not, to be sure, originate with Alciphron;
for we find earlier instances in the imaginary love-letters composed in
verse by the Roman poet, Ovid, under the names of famous women of early
legend, such as those of Oenone to Paris (which suggested a beautiful
poem of Tennyson's), Medea to Jason, and many others. In these one finds
keen insight into character, especially feminine character, together
with much that is exquisite in fancy and tender in expression. But it is
to Alciphron that we owe the adaptation of