this form of composition to
prose fiction, and its employment in a far wider range of psychological
and social observation.

The life whose details are given us by Alciphron is the life of
contemporary Athens in the persons of its easy-going population. The
writers whose letters we are supposed to read in reading Alciphron are
peasants, fishermen, parasites, men-about-town, and courtesans. The
language of the letters is neat, pointed, and appropriate to the person
who in each case is supposed to be the writer; and the details are
managed with considerable art. Alciphron effaces all impression of his
own personality, and is lost in the characters who for the time being
occupy his pages. One reads the letters as he would read a genuine
correspondence. The illusion is perfect, and we feel that we are for the
moment in the Athens of the third century before Christ; that we are
strolling in its streets, visiting its shops, its courts, and its
temples, and that we are getting a whiff of the Aegean, mingled with the
less savory odors of the markets and of the wine-shops. We stroll about
the city elbowing our way through the throng of boatmen, merchants, and
hucksters. Here a barber stands outside his shop and solicits custom;
there an old usurer with pimply face sits bending over his accounts in a
dingy little office; at the corner of the street a crowd encircles some
Cheap Jack who is showing off his juggling tricks at a small
three-legged table, making sea-shells vanish out of sight and then
taking them from his mouth. Drunken soldiers pass and repass, talking
boisterously of their bouts and brawls, of their drills and punishments,
and the latest news of their barracks, and forming a striking contrast
to the philosopher, who, in coarse robes, moves with supercilious look
and an affectation of deep thought, in silence amid the crowd that
jostles him. The scene is vivid, striking, realistic.

Many of the letters are from women; and in these, especially, Alciphron
reveals the daily life of the Athenians. We see the demimonde at their
toilet, with their mirrors, their powders, their enamels and rouge-pots,
their brushes and pincers, and all the thousand and one accessories.
Acquaintances come in to make a morning call, and we hear their
chatter,--Thais and Megara and Bacchis, Hermione and Myrrha. They nibble
cakes, drink sweet wine, gossip about their respective lovers, hum the
latest songs, and enjoy themselves with perfect ab