we prefer his copy to the original. The germ-idea of Kipling's _Finest
Story in the World_ is to be found in Poe's _Tale of the Ragged
Mountains_; Apuleius's germ-plot, of the man who was changed by
enchantment into an ass, and could only recover his human shape by
eating rose-leaves, was taken either from Lucian or from Lucius
of Patrae. In at least three of his interpolations he remarkably
foreshadows the prose short-story method, upon which we are wont to
pride ourselves as being a unique discovery of the past eight decades:
these are _Bellepheron's Story; The Story of Cupid and Psyche_, one of
the most exquisite both in form and matter in any language or age; and
the story of _The Deceitful Woman and the Tub_, which Boccaccio made
use of in his _Decameron_ as the second novel for the seventh day.

In the intense and visual quality of the atmosphere with which he
pervades his narrative he has no equal among the writers of English
prose-fiction until Sir Walter Scott appears. "Apuleius has enveloped
his world of marvels in a heavy air of witchery and romance. You
wander with Lucius across the hills and through the dales of Thessaly.
With all the delight of a fresh curiosity you approach its far-seen
towns. You journey at midnight under the stars, listening in terror
for the howling of the wolves or the stealthy ambush. At other whiles
you sit in the robbers' cave and hear the ancient legends of Greece
retold. The spring comes on, and 'the little birds chirp and sing
their steven melodiously.' Secret raids, ravished brides, valiant
rescues, the gayest intrigues--these are the diverse matters of this
many-colored book."

But as a short-story writer he shares the failing of all his English
brothers in that art, until James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, penned
his tales--namely, that his short-stories do not stand apart, as