and Helen downwards, which the old story enforced on him. A book,
like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the
precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy
accident counts with us for something more than its independent
value. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, coming to Marius just then,
figured for him as indeed The Golden Book: he felt a sort of personal
gratitude to its writer, and saw in it doubtless [94] far more than
was really there for any other reader. It occupied always a peculiar
place in his remembrance, never quite losing its power in frequent
return to it for the revival of that first glowing impression.

Its effect upon the elder youth was a more practical one: it
stimulated the literary ambition, already so strong a motive with
him, by a signal example of success, and made him more than ever an
ardent, indefatigable student of words, of the means or instrument of
the literary art. The secrets of utterance, of expression itself, of
that through which alone any intellectual or spiritual power within
one can actually take effect upon others, to over-awe or charm them
to one's side, presented themselves to this ambitious lad in
immediate connexion with that desire for predominance, for the
satisfaction of which another might have relied on the acquisition
and display of brilliant military qualities. In him, a fine
instinctive sentiment of the exact value and power of words was
connate with the eager longing for sway over his fellows. He saw
himself already a gallant and effective leader, innovating or
conservative as occasion might require, in the rehabilitation of the
mother-tongue, then fallen so tarnished and languid; yet the sole
object, as he mused within himself, of the only sort of patriotic
feeling proper, or possible, for one born of slaves. The popular
speech was gradually departing from the form [95] and rule of literary