town is as ingenious as it is able. Haley also has Trimalchio in his
favor, as has also La Porte du Theil. "I saw the Sibyl at Cumae," says
Trimalchio. Now if the scene of the dinner is actually at Cumae this
sounds very peculiar; it might even be a gloss added by some copyist
whose knowledge was not equal to his industry. On the other hand,
suppose Trimalchio is speaking of something so commonplace in his
locality that the second term has become a generic, then the difficulty
disappears. We today, even though standing upon the very spot in Melos
where the Venus was unearthed, would still refer to her as the Venus de
Melos. Friedlaender, in bracketing Cumis, has not taken this
sufficiently into consideration. Mommsen, in an excellent paper (Hermes,
1878), has laid the scene at Cumae. His logic is almost unanswerable,
and the consensus of opinion is in favor of the latter town.



III

REALISM. Realism, as we are concerned with it, may be defined as the
literary effect produced by the marshaling of details in their exactitude
for the purpose of bringing out character. The fact that they may be
ugly and vulgar the reverse, makes not the slightest difference. The
modern realist contemplates the inanimate things which surround us with
peculiar complaisance, and it is right that he should as these things
exert upon us a constant and secret influence. The workings of the human
mind, in complex civilizations, are by no means simple; they are involved
and varied: our thoughts, our feelings, our wills, associate themselves
with an infinite number of sensations and images which play one upon the
other, and which individualize, in some measure, every action we commit,
and stamp it. The merit of our modern realists lies in the fact that