charming idyl of Baucis and Philemon or the love-tale of Pyramus and
Thisbe; his interest is in what happened, in the story for the story's
sake. So, likewise, in the rhetorical evolution of his thought, and the
management of his metre, he writes simply as the artist, with the
artistic conscience as his only rule. The rhetorician is as strong in him
as it had been in the _Amores;_ but it is under better control, and
seldom leads him into excesses of bad taste, nor is it so overmastering
as not to allow free play to his better qualities, his kindliness, his
good-humour, his ungrudging appreciation of excellence, in his evolution
of thought--or his play of fancy, if the expression be preferred--he has
an alertness and precision akin to great intellectual qualities; and it
is this, perhaps, which has made him a favourite with so many great men
of letters. Shakespeare himself, in his earlier work, alike the plays and
the poems, writes in the Ovidian manner, and often in what might be
direct imitation of Ovid; the motto from the _Amores_ prefixed to the
_Venus and Adonis_ is not idly chosen. Still more remarkable, because
less superficially evident, is the affinity between Ovid and Milton. At
first sight no two poets, perhaps, could seem less alike. But it is known
that Ovid was one of Milton's favourite poets; and if one reads the
_Metamorphoses_ with an eye kept on _Paradise Lost_, the intellectual
resemblance, in the manner of treatment of thought and language, is
abundantly evident, as well in the general structure of their rhetoric as
in the lapses of taste and obstinate puerilities (_non ignoravit vitia
sua sed amavit_ might be said of Milton also), which come from time to
time in their maturest work.

The _Metamorphoses_ was regarded by Ovid himself as his masterpiece. In
the first impulse of his despair at leaving Rome, he burned his own copy
of the still incomplete poem. But other copies were in existence; and
though he writes afterwards as though it had been published without his