most diverting composition, so jaunty and full of witty impertinences that it is evident he knew the hard-headed Roman judges would dismiss the prosecution as a farce—­is still extant under the name of ‘The Apology; or, Concerning Magic.’  This in after days became oddly jumbled with the story of ‘The Golden Ass’ and its transformations, so that St. Augustine was inclined to believe Apuleius actually a species of professional wizard.

The plot of ‘The Golden Ass’ is very simple.  Lucius of Madaura, a young man of property, sets out on his travels to sow his wild oats.  He pursues this pleasant occupation with the greatest zeal according to the prevailing mode:  he is no moralist.  The partner of his first intrigue is the maid of a woman skilled in witchcraft.  The curiosity of Lucius being greatly exercised about the sorceress and her magic, he importunes the girl to procure from her mistress a magic salve which will transform him at will into an owl.  By mistake he receives the wrong salve; and instead of the bird metamorphosis which he had looked for, he undergoes an unlooked-for change into an ass.  In this guise, and in the service of various masters, he has opportunities of observing the follies of men from a novel standpoint.  His adventures are numerous, and he hears many strange stories, the latter being chronicled as episodes in the record of his experiences.  At last the goddess Isis appears in a dream, and obligingly shows him the way to effect his second metamorphosis, by aid of the high priest of her temple, where certain mysteries are about to be celebrated.  Lucius is freed from his disguise, and is initiated into the holy rites.

‘The Golden Ass’ is full of dramatic power and variety.  The succession of incident, albeit grossly licentious at times, engages the interest without a moment’s dullness.  The main narrative, indeed, is no less entertaining than the episodes.  The work became a model for story-writers of a much later period, even to the times of Fielding and Smollett.  Boccaccio borrowed freely from it; at least one of the many humorous exploits of Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’ can be attributed to an adventure of Lucius; while ‘Gil Blas’ abounds in reminiscences of the Latin novel.  The student of folk-lore will easily detect in the tasks imposed by Venus on her unwelcome daughter-in-law, in the episode of ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ the possible original from which the like fairy tales of Europe drew many a suggestion.  Probably Apuleius himself was indebted to still earlier Greek sources.

Scarcely any Latin production was more widely known and studied from the beginning of the Italian Renaissance to the middle of the seventeenth century.  In its style, however, it is far from classic.  It is full of archaisms and rhetorical conceits.  In striving to say things finely, the author frequently failed to say them well.  This fault, however, largely disappears in the translation; and whatever may be the literary defects of the novel, it offers rich compensation in the liveliness, humor, and variety of its substance.