the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_, some of the _Dialogues of the Gods_,
and perhaps best of all, _The Liar_.

As it occurs to himself to repel the imputation of plagiarism in _A
literary Prometheus_, the point must be briefly touched upon. There
is no doubt that Homer preceded him in making the gods extremely, even
comically, human, that Plato showed him an example of prose dialogue,
that Aristophanes inspired his constructive fancy, that Menippus
provided him with some ideas, how far developed on the same lines we
cannot now tell, that Menander's comedies and Herodas's mimes
contributed to the absolute naturalness of his conversation. If any,
or almost any, of these had never existed, Lucian would have been more
or less different from what he is. His originality is not in the least
affected by that; we may resolve him theoretically into his elements;
but he too had the gift, that out of three sounds he framed, not a
fourth sound, but a star. The question of his originality is no more
important--indeed much less so--than that of Sterne's.

When we pass to purely literary matters, the first thing to be
remarked upon is the linguistic miracle presented to us. It is useless
to dwell upon it in detail, since this is an introduction not to
Lucian, but to a translation of Lucian; it exists, none the less. A
Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but in
that of five or six centuries before, and he does it, if not with
absolute correctness, yet with the easy mastery that we expect only
from one in a million of those who write in their mother tongue, and
takes his place as an immortal classic. The miracle may be repeated;
an English-educated Hindu may produce masterpieces of Elizabethan
English that will rank him with Bacon and Ben Jonson; but it will
surprise us, when it does happen. That Lucian was himself aware of the