The use of the epistolary form in fictitious composition did not, to be sure, originate with Alciphron; for we find earlier instances in the imaginary love-letters composed in verse by the Roman poet, Ovid, under the names of famous women of early legend, such as those of Oenone to Paris (which suggested a beautiful poem of Tennyson’s), Medea to Jason, and many others.  In these one finds keen insight into character, especially feminine character, together with much that is exquisite in fancy and tender in expression.  But it is to Alciphron that we owe the adaptation of this form of composition to prose fiction, and its employment in a far wider range of psychological and social observation.

The life whose details are given us by Alciphron is the life of contemporary Athens in the persons of its easy-going population.  The writers whose letters we are supposed to read in reading Alciphron are peasants, fishermen, parasites, men-about-town, and courtesans.  The language of the letters is neat, pointed, and appropriate to the person who in each case is supposed to be the writer; and the details are managed with considerable art.  Alciphron effaces all impression of his own personality, and is lost in the characters who for the time being occupy his pages.  One reads the letters as he would read a genuine correspondence.  The illusion is perfect, and we feel that we are for the moment in the Athens of the third century before Christ; that we are strolling in its streets, visiting its shops, its courts, and its temples, and that we are getting a whiff of the Aegean, mingled with the less savory odors of the markets and of the wine-shops.  We stroll about the city elbowing our way through the throng of boatmen, merchants, and hucksters.  Here a barber stands outside his shop and solicits custom; there an old usurer with pimply face sits bending over his accounts in a dingy little office; at the corner of the street a crowd encircles some Cheap Jack who is showing off his juggling tricks at a small three-legged table, making sea-shells vanish out of sight and then taking them from his mouth.  Drunken soldiers pass and repass, talking boisterously of their bouts and brawls, of their drills and punishments, and the latest news of their barracks, and forming a striking contrast to the philosopher, who, in coarse robes, moves with supercilious look and an affectation of deep thought, in silence amid the crowd that jostles him.  The scene is vivid, striking, realistic.

Many of the letters are from women; and in these, especially, Alciphron reveals the daily life of the Athenians.  We see the demimonde at their toilet, with their mirrors, their powders, their enamels and rouge-pots, their brushes and pincers, and all the thousand and one accessories.  Acquaintances come in to make a morning call, and we hear their chatter,—­Thais and Megara and Bacchis, Hermione and Myrrha.  They nibble cakes, drink sweet wine, gossip about their respective lovers, hum the latest songs, and enjoy