t be expected from one who left so few themes untouched,
Apuleius is one of the most superficial of ancient writers. It has
been well said of him by M. Paul Monceaux, 'Apulee est un de ces
esprits encyclopediques, apres a la curee de toutes les connaissances,
qui se rencontrent au commencement et a la fin des civilisations.' For
the acquisition of his extraordinary reputation he needed an age and
an audience in which learning and literature alike were decadent,
though far from forgotten. He has none of the scientific spirit. He
does not really understand the authors he quotes; he has no critical
spirit, and his own investigations are prompted by indiscriminate
curiosity. But he has vast stores of miscellaneous knowledge such as
might delight the half-educated, and as a rhetorician he possesses a
strange and debased brilliance, fired by an astonishing if disorderly
imagination. The verve, the humour, and above all the welter of warmth
and colour that characterize the _Golden Ass_ make us forgive the
palpable degradation of the Latin language. Not less remarkable is the
_Apologia_. There are few speeches of antiquity that give such a vivid
impression of the character of the author and of the life of the
society in which he moved. The style, it is true, is often bombastic
and affected, many of the arguments are almost more puerile and absurd
than the accusations, while the intense conceit and complacency of the
author often make him ridiculous. A man of wide and varied knowledge,
he has no depth of intellect. He is always half charlatan, and the
reader is rarely free from the impression that he is taking liberties
with the uncertain taste and ignorance of his provincial audience. But
even the weaknesses of style and argument have their charm for the
modern reader. For, if he never entirely fails to laugh with Apuleius,
he certainly indulges in many a hearty laugh at him.

The _Florida_ are no less superficial and bombastic, and the vanity of
Apuleius is revealed even more remarkably than in the _Apologia_. But
they are never long enough to be tedious, and contain much that is
amusing, be the humour unconscious or intentional; and even if we can
rarely give whole-hearted admiration to the style, we cannot but
marvel at its dexterity, while its very _bizarrerie_ is not without
its charm.

This is hardly the place for a disquisition upon African Latin. It is
sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of