versity again and recall the learned doctors to their work at the palace.

It was at this time that Psellos found time to write many of his works. His treaties on Demonology was one of them, which is characterized by sound common sense; in it he attacks in an able manner the doctrine then in vogue about demons, which was preached by a sect called the Euchita. 'Indeed,' writes Psellos, the things themselves proclaim in a barefaced manner that they are made up of vanity, imposture, and a groundless imagination.' This doctrine of demonology, however, held firm hold of the people, and is still believed. There are demons, they tell you, which hover in mid-air to seize the souls of the wicked which are vainly flitting heavenwards.

In his book on the virtues of stones Psellos does not show so much practical sense, yet he gives us a true insight into the medical lore of the time. The blood-stone,' he says, 'is so called because it is sprinkled with water of a bloody colour, and heals ophthalmia; the amethyst is of a hyacinth colour, and heals headaches, and makes tipplers sober-hence its name à-pe@varijs,' and so on.

On their return to the imperial household they found everything disorganized. Monòmachos had supplanted Psellos by a man whom he again refuses to name, but says, 'They govern us with wretches whom we had redeemed from slavery. Important posts are not given to the Pericles and Themistocles of the age, but to the most vile Spartacus.' In this state of affairs Psellos and his friends decided to go into a monastery. Leichondes, Xiphitinos, and Johannes Byzantios set off at once without delay, but Psellos was moved by the emperor's entreaties to tarry just a little longer; but then our author got ill and had some unpleasant religious thoughts, which finally decided him to join his friends at the monastery on Mount Olympus, in Bithynia, in spite of all the emperor could say to dissuade him.

He went

Nothing shows us more clearly the extraordinary versatility of this man than his conduct in this transaction. full of enthusiasm for his new calling, he took the name of Michael by which after-ages have generally known him, and as he approached the sacred mountain he tells us that he was entranced beyond measure at reaching a spot at last where so many pious hermits sing with the angels the praises of the Highest.' But his enthusiasm for a monastic life soon died away: no sooner had he put on the monk's dress than he began to pine for the life and society of his dear Constanti

nople; his love of refinement and elegant tastes revolted at the ignorance and baseness of the ascetic monks with whom he had thrown in his lot-monks who called his dearly beloved Plato 'the Hellenic Satan.' He could stand it no longer, and even his friend Xiphitinos, whose companionship had been one of his chief inducements to enter the monastery, turned morose and ascetic too. Finally, to the great scandal of every monk in the Eastern Empire, Michael Psellos cast off his cowl and set off again for Constantinople. A monk named Jacob took upon himself to write a letter disparaging Psellos and the unusual course he had taken, but Psellos answered him in a most satirical lampoon which, more than anything else, shows the entire absence of any restriction on religious dogmas. M. Sathas gives it to us, and amongst other observations Psellos writes:

O, insatiable Jacob, you have not planted vines in your lifetime, but you have eaten many grapes; you have not trodden the grapes with your feet, but you have drunk whole vats full of wine; . . your body is exuding with the vapours of wine, Put on a panther skin, shake the thyrsus, invoke Dionysos, and cry Evæ! We will crown your forehead with vine tendrils, father Jacob! old Silenos!

On his return to his dear Constantinople Psellos found affairs very much altered. The Empress Zoe was dead, her consort Monòmachos was dead, and the old Empress Theodora, the last of the house of Porphyrogenitus, ruled the empire in an exceedingly lax sort of way, with the aid of eunuchs. At length she was induced to chose as assistant in ruling, and probable successor, a weak old man, Michael Stratioticos, whom Psellos contemptuously speaks of as a philosopher on unphilosophical things; that is to say, not a real philosopher, but one who apes to be so.' On the death of Theodora the position of this Emperor was soon assailed by Isaac Comnenus. Psellos was chosen by the Emperor Michael to go as mediator, and if possible to arrange terms by which the empire should be left to him for life; in this delicate mission our historian showed his usual characteristic of finesse. Isaac Comnenus was encamped just across the Bosphorus, and thither Psellos went to conduct negotiations. His account of his térror on this occasion is highly ludicrous. He tells us that he quite expected to be assassinated in his tent. On the last night he remained in the camp he could not sleep at all, and at the slightest noise he started up thinking the executioner was at hand. 'As day came on I grew more calm,' he adds, and I felt that

it would be a far less grievous misfortune to be put to death in daylight.' However, no one apparently wished to kill him, and he was permitted to return in safety to Constantinople. No sooner had Isaac Comnenus crossed the Bosphorus and turned Michael Stratioticos off the throne, than he sent for Psellos, asked his advice on State affairs, and made him 'the best of friends and President of the Senate.' This characteristic of self-preservation and obsequious respect for the rising star is very obvious in this transaction. He had now for years served as adviser to the house of Porphyrogenitus. That line was extinct; he recognized the rising power of Comnenus, and doubtless in that expedition of trust which took him across the Bosphorus he not only paved the way for his future advancement, but warded off the dangers of assassination which seemed to threaten the chosen servant of the falling emperor.

Another circumstance which occurred at this time does not exactly reflect much credit on our author. The Emperor Isaac Comnenus was jealous at the growing power of the patriarch Keroullarios; he thought that the head of the Eastern Church had aspirations for power temporal as well as spiritual, such as the Roman pontiff Hildebrand was just then asserting for himself; so he sent for Psellos and entrusted him with the delicate office of humbling the patriarch. He did this in a most effectual way by impeaching him in public for treason, and at the same time accusing him of Chaldaic heresies. It is impossible for us to tell what grounds he had to go upon, or what powers he had had given him. All we know is that Keroullàrios disdained to answer the accusations brought against him, and went home and died. Immediately there was a reaction in his favour, the people said that his hand, though dead, was still raised in benediction; the emperor shed tears of regret, and anybody but Michael Psellos would probably in a similar situation have found his position difficult. But he seems to have been quite equal to the occasion; he pronounced a funeral oration over the deceased patriarch's grave, given us by M. Sathas, in which he spoke of that holy prelate, that marytr of orthodoxy,' and quite ignored the fact that he had been the chief cause of his death. It appears wonderful to our eyes that such things as these could for a moment have been tolerated; but it is impossible for us nowadays to grasp the horrible corruption of an age when the license of those in power was unlimited.

After a brief period of two years Isaac Comnenus, worn out by ill-health, and desirous of exchanging his throne for religious

seclusion, determined on an unusually noble course. Instead of naming as his successor one of his own family, he chose to put the imperial crown on the head of Constantine, a member of the noble house of Doukas. Psellos gives us a graphic description of this transaction: how the emperor in his chamber of sickness was conflicted by doubts, and hesitated to perform the deed he wished; how Constantine Doukas, on his side, was harassed by uncertainty and the awkwardness of his position; how the nobles were all gathered in conclave in the palace, and none of them durst move in the matter; how Psellos himself solved the difficulty by placing the imperial crown on the head of Constantine and announcing the fact to Isaac. He tells us this story in a very simple fashion. It did not matter to him who was emperor; he was very good friends with Isaac Comnenus, and all his life had been on intimate terms with Constantine Doukas. It reads more like playing at sovereignty than sovereignty itself; for the people outside were told to cheer for their new emperor, which they accordingly did, and Psellos was again in the post of adviser-general to the crown.

The account Psellos gives us of the reign and times of Constantine X. is not nearly so interesting; it is a too obvious eulogy, written in the reign of his son, Michael VI., whose preceptor Psellos had been. It was the age of female rule just now, for Constantine did not long survive his elevation to the throne, and left the empire and the guardianship of his young son to his widow Eudoxia, with injunctions not to marry again; and for a third time we find Psellos the confidant of an empress. Eudoxia was a lady of marked literary tastes, for under the influence of Psellos and his literary colleagues literature had become the fashion in the Byzantine capital. Eudoxia occupied her leisure moments in writing poems on trivial subjects, such, for example, as Ariadne's hair,' and in a work on the occupations suitable to a princess. But it was apparently this love for literature which attracted her to Psellos, and in searching for a cause for his universal popularity we may attribute it to this: he was probably the only agreeable, enlightened man of his day, the only man whose judgment was based on a practical knowledge of the world. Yet with literature his influence with Eudoxia stopped; he could not prevent her from becoming enamoured of a handsome young soldier, Romanos Diogenes by name, whom she actually rescued from the gallows and raised to the throne as her colleague, and to whom Psellos writes one of those horribly fulsome letters which M. Sathas gives us; but in his history he quite con

tradicts himself and speaks of him as a branch of a race of traitors.'

Whatever faults Romanos Diogenes may have had in private life, he was a brave soldier, and one of the last of the weak rulers of Constantinople who made any attempt to attack the Turks on their own ground and prevent their progress westwards; but the party against him at Constantinople, of which we may presume Psellos was a member, was too strong; they opposed his brave plans in every way, and eventually betrayed him into the hands of the Ottomans. On his return to freedom poor Romanòs was condemned to have his eyes put out, Eudoxia was dethroned, and Michael VI., Psellos's pupil, was raised to the throne. There can be little doubt, though he does not admit it, that Psellos was the principal mover in the overthrow of Romanos; his position as pedagogue of a young, vacillating emperor would give him unlimited power, and it is just like him to write a letter of fulsome pity to poor Romanos, who was dying from the effects of having had his eyes put out by an unskilled executioner. This letter M. Sathas gives us, and it makes one's blood run cold.

After the young emperor, Michael VI., ascended the throne Psellos ruled the imperial household, guiding and flattering his pupil in his usual obsequious way, and he was mixed up in no more revolutions. At length, weary of life and its uncertainties, he persuaded his emperor to join him in entering a convent, and in 1077 Psellos and Michael VI. entered upon a monastic life from which they never emerged.

No very satisfactory verdict can be passed on Psellos after a perusal of his writings. His excuse must be that he lived when he did, in the most despicable times of that decaying Eastern empire. Had he lived in brighter days he would undoubtedly have risen to distinction in literature, for he struggled even then to revive the dying name of Hellenist, and in some of his letters he laments bitterly over the state into which Greece, properly so-called, had fallen. In writing to a man who had refused the prefecture of Greece he thus expresses himself: If the famous and envied fields of glorious Greece, if the noble land from whence came forth the warriors of Marathon, the Philips, and the Alexanders of olden days are not sufficient for your pleasure and support, what portion of the inhabited globe, I ask, is worthy to receive you?'

Psellos took a lively interest in the antiquities of his country, and formed a private museum of ancient marbles. The bygone glories of his country were for ever foremost in his mind; the miserable petty intrigues of the court in which he lived must