His fame spreads. The ass becomes a lion, and is ridden to Corinth to be exhibited in the amphitheatre at the public games.

Up to this point, with the exceptions noted, Apuleius has closely followed the Greek original. The story is practically the same in its incidents as 'The Luciad or the Ass.' While preparations are being made for the disgusting exhibition in which he is to figure, the ass slips out of the gate and escapes to the sea-shore. There by moonlight he prays fervently to the Queen of Heaven to release him from his animal form. While he sleeps, he beholds in a vision the goddess rise out of the sea. She reveals herself to him under her true name, Queen Isis,' as the Mother of Nature, essentially one in her godhead, worshipped throughout the whole world by many titles, under diverse aspects and with many different rites. She tells him that,' at to-morrow's celebration of her mysteries, her priest will bear in his right hand a garland of roses, flowers mystically associated with the honour of women. If Lucius crops them, he will regain his human shape. All passes as Isis has foretold. The day itself seemed to rejoice. For after the horefrost,' so Adlington translates the passage, 'ensued the whote and temperat Sunne, whereby the litle birdes, wening that the spring time had ben come, did chirp and sing in their steven melodiously.' The solemn procession sweeps through the streets. The ass, eagerly waiting in the crowd, watched for the priest, who, admonished by the goddess, thrust out the garland of roses. And, as Lucius eats, the ass's shape slips from him, and he is restored to human form.

Thenceforward he consecrates his life to the service of the goddess, dedicates himself to chastity, and becomes enrolled as a soldier in her warfare. Many visions are vouchsafed. From the lips of Queen Isis, or of the 'Soveraigne Father of all the Goddes,' Osiris, the reformed Lucius learns the will of Heaven. He journeys to Rome, where he passes from stage to stage of initiation into the sacred mysteries. He approaches the borders of Hell; he treads the very threshold of Proserpina; he is rapt through all the elements; at midnight he sees the bright shining of the sun; in its dazzling light he beholds Gods of the heaven above and

Gods of the earth below, and in their sight and presence he worships. He bears the heavy expense of his ascent in the religious hierarchy with cheerful readiness, for Osiris himself has promised to the poore man of Madaura' the temporal blessings of rich forensic triumphs. Undeterred by the cost, he continues his advance from degree to degree, until at length, as one of the shrinebearers of Osiris, with closely shaven crown, he joyfully performs his sacred duties in the ancient Pallaice' of Sulla. So ends 'The Golden Ass.'

The conclusion of The Golden Ass' is added by Apuleius himself to the original story. In the arduous services of religion the reformed Lucius finds his salvation. By the sudden turn which Apuleius thus gives to his tale, he lifts it to a higher plane. The abrupt change and the unexpected elevation of the tone suggest the question whether the book is only a brilliant piece of nonsense, or whether a thread of serious purpose runs through the humorous absurdities, the burlesque terrors, the animal coarseness of 'The Golden Ass.' It is impossible to answer such a question satisfactorily, because so little is known of the true beliefs of the author. But the narrative of the passion of Lucius for Fotis, his metamorphosis into a brute beast, his accumulated sufferings, his recovery of a human shape through the intervention of the goddess, and his consecration of the remainder of his life to her service, obviously lend themselves to allegorical interpretation. Midway in the book comes another addition by Apuleius. Imbedded in the strange setting of his wild tale of adventure is the fairystory of Cupid and Psyche' through which runs a similar vein of allegory. Both may be interpreted as the purification and ascent of the human soul. In both cases, fortunately, the tale itself triumphs over its symbolic interpretation. Apuleius is too good a storyteller to allow his attention to be distracted by any subordinate purpose. His artistic sense would have repelled him from such a division of aim. Nor is this all. To suggest that he is a deliberate allegorist would be to claim for him a piety of intention which the general tone of the book belies. Yet it seems probable that throughout he allows himself to play, not indeed with allegory, but with the idea of a higher meaning,

.

·

In this connexion the first few lines of the book may be significant. Lucius introduces himself as being, on his mother's side, of the ligne of that most excellent person Plutarche.' This strange piece of genealogy, which is another addition made by Apuleius, is put conspicuously in the forefront. The statement may, of course, only mean that Apuleius, who identifies himself with Lucius, acknowledges his spiritual descent from Plutarch as the father of his theory of demonic intermediaries. Or it may also indicate that, as is here suggested, the story will be handled after the manner of Plutarch, with a due regard to its ethical value. At first sight no two men seem more dissimilar than the African rhetorician and the Greek biographer. A kindly, simpleminded country gentleman, Plutarch was content to live in a decayed city of a depopulated Greece, spending a busy and useful public life in local administration, and, innocent of all rhetorical artifices, writing his garrulous, rambling, immortal Lives. All this is in startling contrast with the career of Apuleius. But in their interest in the relations between divine and human natures the two men meet on common ground.

To the ancient ancestral faiths Plutarch was bound by every tie which attached him so closely to the land of his fathers. For him every mystery of polytheism, every ritual form, every ceremonial observance, every popular myth or legend, however gross or perverted they might be, yet enshrined some essential truth inspired by the gods. It was on this line of defence that paganism was entrenching itself against attack. It is difficult to imagine that Apuleius approached these questions from Plutarch's starting-point of reverent conservatism. But, by whatever road he travelled, he had reached the same position. The most fantastic rite of the religions into which he had been initiated might be a real means of access; every ceremonial, however gross, by which the simplest country-folk invoked the interposition of the gods, might be a true channel of communication; oracles, divinations, auguries might prove to be open avenues of inspiration and revelation. No myth or tradition, however extravagant, was wholly without a core of divine truth. If any ritual or observance was from its cruelty or obscenity wholly indefensible, it might be the

work of the malignant or revengeful demons who were among the host of intermediaries. So here, in Plutarch's manner, he applies to the materials of his romance the same methods, and brings to bear the same habit of mind. In some lost Greek manuscript he has found the wild legend of a popular belief which is credited far and wide. In his wanderings he has heard, perhaps from the lips of some ancient beldame like the robbers' housekeeper, a fairy-story which circulates throughout the world. He seizes on the ethical value both of the popular legend and of the fragment of folk-lore. He retells both as in outline he had found them; he leaves them structurally unchanged; he obtrudes no interpretation. But with the deft touch of a literary master-in the one case by the choice of a name, in the other by the consecration of his hero's life-he suggests their deeper meaning, and claims for both the expression of a moral truth. Only in this limited and remote sense can 'The Golden Ass' be regarded as an allegory. It remains what it was meant to be-a story, and a story so brilliantly told that a farce is transformed into a

romance.

ERNLE.

Art. 4.—SIR ALFRED LYALL AND INDIAN PROBLEMS.

1. Asiatic Studies, Religious and Social. By Sir Alfred Lyall. Murray, 1899.

2. Studies in Literature and History. By the late Sir Alfred Lyall. Murray, 1915.

3. Verses written in India. By Sir Alfred Lyall. Kegan Paul, 1896.

4. Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, presented to both Houses of Parliament. [Cd. 9190.] H.M. Stationery Office, 1918.

5. Views of the Government of India upon the Reports of Lord Southborough's Committees. [Cmd. 176.] H.M. Stationery Office, 1919.

6. Indian Nationality. By R. N. Gilchrist. With introduction by Prof. Ramsay Muir. Longmans, 1920.

Of all the political writers who adorned the past generation, it would be difficult to name any one who represented what was best in the spirit of the later 19th century more finely than the poet, thinker, and historian who was Sir Alfred Lyall. To those who study, amid the stormy controversies of the day, his all-too scanty remains, there may well come a poignant sense of the need of the present generation for the true, historic poise of thought characteristic of that unique mind. It is an irony of time that an age may be led by the whole character of its ventures into the untried, both in thought and action, indeed by what is strongest in itself, to scorn, if not utterly to forget, that part of its immediate past which it most profoundly needs for its guidance. The very personalities which are the most exquisite products of the travail and discovery, the greatness and sorrows of one age, and which could most perfectly convey its teaching and message to the next, often signify to it little or nothing. This is especially true of the relations between the Victorian era and its successor. An age has dawned in which the desire to make history, to apply human thought with greater effect to the refashioning of the conditions of existence, has arisen with a force hitherto unknown.

For such an age the most valuable gift which the