prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession?' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride...
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_.'

Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system. The external characteristics of the
philosophers, the absurd stories current about them, and the popular
misrepresentations of their doctrines--it is in these that philosophy
consists for him. That he had read some of them there is no doubt; but