the "golden" book of that day, a gift to Flavian, as was shown by the
purple writing on the handsome yellow wrapper, following the title
Flaviane!--it said,

Flaviane! lege Felicitur!
Flaviane! Vivas! Fioreas!
Flaviane! Vivas! Gaudeas!

[56] It was perfumed with oil of sandal-wood, and decorated with
carved and gilt ivory bosses at the ends of the roller.

And the inside was something not less dainty and fine, full of the
archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted,
quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the
lifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian,
racy morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses:--all alike,
mere playthings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the
erudite artist, unsuppressed by his erudition, which, however, made
some people angry, chiefly less well "got-up" people, and especially
those who were untidy from indolence.

No! it was certainly not that old-fashioned, unconscious ease of the
early literature, which could never come again; which, after all, had
had more in common with the "infinite patience" of Apuleius than with
the hack-work readiness of his detractors, who might so well have
been "self-conscious" of going slip-shod. And at least his success
was unmistakable as to the precise literary effect he had intended,
including a certain tincture of "neology" in expression--nonnihil
interdum elocutione novella parum signatum--in the language of
Cornelius Fronto, the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. What