in the murder of a Duc d' Enghein. As I looked upon the equestrian statue of the Iron Duke, opposite Apsley House, I felt how fit was unresponsive bronze for the portrayal of the man whose axiom was, "Say what you have to say, don't quote Latin, and sit down." On the other hand, the head of Napoleon, in the Corcoran Gallery, at Washington, seems the impenetrable mask which hid the very personification of misconducted energy. I do not find the calm, virtuous, conservative John Jay, who graduated from college with an oration on "The Blessings of Peace," then to serve his country well at home and abroad, anything like as inspiring as the vividly brilliant, though erring, Webster. The virtuous Southey, author of ponderous prose and heavy poetry, supported the wife and family of the drugridden, irresponsible Coleridge, because the latter could not or would not do it himself; yet this eminently "virtuous" laureate does not touch the chords that the charming, many-sided "wicked" Coleridge does, or the talented but passionate Byron, -although, if one takes as verity the word of that biting Irish lawyer, John Philpot Curran, the "noble Lord" passes out of the lists of the brilliant wicked, to be classed among those who show forth what Walter Shandy calls "The Sniveling Virtue of Meekness." Speaking of the poet's "Farewell" to Lady Byron, Curran says, "I protest I do not understand this kind of whimpering; here is a man who first weeps over his wife, and then wipes his eyes with the public."

The noted Bishop Wilberforce, of the mid-Victorian era, son of the greater William, foe of slavery and friend of the younger Pitt, virtuous and able (but narrow), is not to be compared in appeal with the volcanic Swift, "The wild Dean from Ireland," as he once called himself, of whom the Earl of Nottingham, in the latter days of the reign of Anne, said "he was hardly suspected of being a Christian." Or again, that cold, impeccable leader of Parliament in the time of George III, the younger Pitt himself, does not attract as does his contemporary, Charles Fox; brilliant gambler, lovable drunkard. Nor is John Quincy Adams, honest of purpose and fearless in bearing, but cold and repellant, as compelling as is the explosive Andrew Jackson, he who would rarely acknowledge a superior, and who, when a senator, could

never make a speech because of the violence of his feelings; "I have seen him attempt it repeatedly," said Jefferson, "and choke with rage."

Dr. Johnson said he would as soon dine with the highwayman Jack Ketch, as with John Wilkes, thrice elected member from Middlesex, and thrice refused admission to the House, but admitted upon a fourth election and subsequently made Lord Mayor of London. Nevertheless, I would vastly prefer this same Wilkes to the weak but virtuous North, who, according to published correspondence, permitted his king to control him, so that instead of resigning and owning himself, he carried on the bloody, costly, and, to the English, disastrous American Revolution in direct opposition to his own best judgment and personal wishes. The visionary, magnetic, intellectually superb Aaron Burr, past-master in the art of sinning (to most of us), takes precedence over the learned and cold William Wirt, AttorneyGeneral under Madison, who conducted his prosecution in the great treason trial. Who can say that Louis IX of France, canonized as Saint, the religious fanatic who spent his best efforts in sentimental crusades to the Holy Land, was so great a man for his country as that intensely interesting sinner, Louis XI, who rescued her from the throes of discord and made her a united nation? I confess to a leaning towards Sarah Jennings, the scheming Duchess of Marlborough, rather than towards the comparatively virtuous but decidedly negative Queen Anne, who had as a device "Semper Idem," which the malicious Swift rendered "Worse and Worse." Robert Walpole, the consummate but corrupt politician of the reigns of the first two Georges (the Bob Booty in Gay's Beggar's Opera), is called by Thackeray "the old pagan," but the novelist hastens to add "with his hireling House of Commons he defended liberty for us," is he not more winning than the eminently virtuous, frigid, uninteresting Spencer Perceval, whose only claim to recognition at the hands of posterity lies in the tragic chance that he was murdered while holding the office of Premier under the Regent, afterwards George IV?

I cannot think any further word necessary to substantiate the claim for thoughtful consideration which the "Brilliant Wicked"

have over the "Dull Virtuous," but if something more weighty than this rambling plea is wanted, I shall quote The Professor at the Breakfast Table: "I don't believe the Devil would give helf as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them unpleasing." And I listen to the cautious footsteps of the chap above me, hearken smilingly to the stumblings from below, look once again at my books, few but eloquent, and whisper to myself "Hear, hear!"

Philadelphia, Pa.

H. MERIAN ALLEN.

BOOK REVIEWS

THE GREEK ROMANCES IN ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION. By Samuel Lee Wolff, Ph.D. New York: Columbia University Press.

One's view of a book, like one's view of a landscape, depends on the point of view. Erwin Rohde, the greatest authority on the Greek romances, used a striking figure to illustrate the transition from Greek classical literature to the ancient novel, or romance. It was, he said, like leaving the hill and dale, rich champaign and towering mountains of a land blessed by the gods, to decend gradually over rough and monotonous heaths into an arid and hideous plain where all was one dead level of sterility. It may seem so from Rohde's point of view. To him the Greek romances are not so much really pieces of fiction-efforts to tell a story-as pieces of declamation, frameworks of narratives on which professors of "fine writing" hung their show-pieces of rhetoric, purple patches of terrible, or pathetic, or prurient description. According to this view, they belong in essence to the same class as Lucian's eulogies of the fly and baldness. If measured, however, by their power to produce literature in other men, certainly these same mances are not barren rhetoric, but deserve quite another rating. To the old classical genres of epic, lyric, and dramatic, history, eloquence, and philosophy, romance came as a low parvenu, and had to be looked on, no doubt, as stylistically a mere variation of the rhetoric of display. Yet no lover of the modern novel can be inclined to dismiss the ancient novel so cavalierly. If Clitophon and Leucippe is not a novel in the true sense, then neither is Joseph Andrews.

Dr. Wolff's study confines itself to the three most famous of the Greek novels, the Ethiopica, or Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus, the Clitophon and Leucippe of Achilles Tatius, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Of the two chapters into which his first part is divided, the first is devoted to the general characteristics of the type, especially with reference to its Alexandrian nature, -to a chronological table, and a very full and careful analysis, or rather synopsis, of the three novels. The second chapter discusses the invention and style of each. Here

it is noticeable that the critic cannot refrain from making merry with the novelists themselves. It seems almost impossible to refrain from poking fun at such a pretentious stilt-walker as Heliodorus; and Achilles Tatius, whatever his other merits, is nearly as destitute of humor. In this respect they both resemble Richardson. As for Longus, though he had in his sort a pretty taste for a joke, yet as Launcelot Gobbo says, "he doth indeed grow to, and hath a kind of taste" which from a modern point of view is no more than a little queer in such a eulogist of primitive innocents. In fact, bombast, fustian, high-falutin' "fine writing," and a most insufferable crop of "conceits" flourish in these authors as in few others, and their heroes and heroines are such utterly impossible and often such utterly contemptible people from every modern Christian point of view that few or no critics can refrain from finding them amusing in the wrong way. Just the weaknesses, however, that excite our amusement or contempt were the attractions to the original readers. And what the decadent Greeks admired, the Elizabethans admired equally, to judge from their imitations of them.

This is well brought out in the second part of Dr. Wolff's treatise, which discusses the influence of these three romances on John Lyly, Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Greene, Thomas Nash, Thomas Lodge, and Shakespeare. Thus Sidney's Arcadia, which he analyses at length, is found to be a direct study from Heliodorus, and Dr. Wolff thinks that Shakespeare derived elements of the plot of the Winter's Tale both from Heliodorus and Longus.

At the very end of the book the reader is tantalized with still another far-reaching query: Were the English novelists of the eighteenth century directly influenced by the Greek romances? The author hints that Richardson was. In the tangled mass of early fiction in the classic and the modern languages, it is a bold critic who dares assert the definite lineage of any particular trait, yet on a careful reading of Joseph Andrews would not anyone who knows the manner of Heliodorus find himself on familiar ground at the end, where Joseph and Fanny seemed to have turned out to be brother and sister?

Dr. Wolff has performed his double task well. The student