views that the man of detached mind recognizes on every question. Not
that justice is always the object; these devices, and dialogue still
more, offer the further advantage of economy; no ideas need be wasted,
if the subject is treated from more than one aspect. The choice of
dialogue may be accounted for thus; it is true that it would not have
availed much if the chooser had not possessed the nimble wit and the
endless power of varying the formula which is so astonishing in
Lucian; but that it was a matter of importance is proved at once by
comparing the _Alexander_ with _The Liar_, or _The dependent Scholar_
with the _Feast of Lapithae_. Lucian's non-dialogue pieces (with the
exception of _The True History_) might have been written by other
people; the dialogues are all his own.

About five-and-thirty of his pieces (or sets of pieces) are in
dialogue, and perhaps the greatest proof of his artistic skill is that
the form never palls; so great is the variety of treatment that no one
of them is like another. The point may be worth dwelling on a little.
The main differences between dialogues, apart from the particular
writer's characteristics, are these: the persons may be two only, or
more; they may be well or ill-matched; the proportions and relations
between conversation and narrative vary; and the objects in view are
not always the same. It is natural for a writer to fall into a groove
with some or all of these, and produce an effect of sameness. Lucian,
on the contrary, so rings the changes by permutations and combinations
of them that each dialogue is approached with a delightful uncertainty
of what form it may take. As to number of persons, it is a long step
from the _Menippus_ to the crowded _dramatis personae_ of _The Fisher_
or the _Zeus Tragoedus_, in the latter of which there are two
independent sets, one overhearing and commenting upon the other. It is
not much less, though of another kind, from _The Parasite_, where the