g"--meet us. There is
a frequent economy of conjunctions. There is the resort to
personification--for instance, in the battle of Love and Shame, which
serves as climax to the elaborate description of the lovers' kissing.
In short, all our old friends--the devices which every generation of
seekers after style parades with such a touching conviction that they
are quite new, and which every literary student knows to be as old as
literature--are to be found here. The language is in its decadence:
the writer has not much to say. But it is surprising how much, with
all his drawbacks, he accomplishes.

[Footnote 185: Sometimes spelt _Ismenias and Ismene_. I believe it was
first published in an Italian translation of the late Renaissance, and
it has appeared in other languages since. But it is only worth reading
in its own.]

[Footnote 186: [Greek: Polis Eurykomis kai talla men agathe, hoti kai
thalatte stephanoutai kai poilmois katarreitai kai leimosi koma kai
tryphais eutheneitai pantodapais, ta d' eis theous eusebes, kai hyper
tas chrysas Athenas hole bomos, hole thyma, theois anathema.]]

[Sidenote: _Its story._]

Whether the book, either as an individual composition, or more
probably as a member of an extinct class, is as important in matter
and in tone as it is in style is more doubtful. The style itself, as
to which there is no doubt, may perhaps colour the matter too much.
All that can be safely said is that it reads with distinctly modern
effect after Heliodorus and Achilles, Longus and Xenophon. The story
is not much. Hysminias, a beautiful youth of the city of Eurycomis, is
chosen for a religious embassy or _kerukeia_ to the neighbouring town
of Aulicomis. The task of acting as host to him falls on one
Sosthenes, whose daughter Hysmine strikes Hysminias with love at first
sight. The progress of their passion is facilitated by the pretty old
habit of girls acting as cupbearers, and favoured by accident to no
small degree, the details of the courtship being sometimes luscious,
but adjusted to less fearless old fashions than the wooings of Chloe
or of Melitta. Adventures by land and sea follow; and, of course, a
happy ending.

[Sidenote: _Its handling._]

But what is really important is the way in which these things are
handled. It has as mere story-telling little merit: the question is
whether the spirit, the conduct, the details, do not show a temper
much more akin to mediaeval than to classical treatment. I t