by which the English reader is often assisted, and he has skilfully
avoided the translation of indecencies which never were of any use,
and being no longer sources of enjoyment, serve only to exclude good
wit, with which, under different conditions of life, they were
associated, from the welcome due to it in all our homes. There is a
just and scholarly, as well as a meddlesome and feeble way of
clearing an old writer from uncleannesses that cause him now to be a
name only where he should be a power. Dr. Francklin has understood
his work in that way better than Dr. Bowdler did. He does not
Bowdlerise who uses pumice to a blot, but he who rubs the copy into
holes wherever he can find an honest letter with a downstroke
thicker than becomes a fine-nibbed pen. A trivial play of fancy in
one of the pieces in this volume, easily removed, would have been as
a dead fly in the pot of ointment, and would have deprived one of
Lucian's best works of the currency to which it is entitled.

Lucian's works are numerous, and they have been translated into
nearly all the languages of Europe.

The "Instructions for Writing History" was probably one of the
earliest pieces written by him after Lucian had settled down at
Samosata to the free use of his pen, and it has been usually
regarded as his best critical work. With ridicule of the
affectations of historians whose names and whose books have passed
into oblivion, he joins sound doctrine upon sincerity of style.
"Nothing is lasting that is feigned," said Ben Jonson; "it will have
another face ere long." Long after Lucian's day an artificial
dignity, accorded specially to work of the historian, bound him by
its conventions to an artificial style. He used, as Johnson said of
Dr. Robertson, "too big words and too many of them." But that was