The Works of Apuleius (Golden Ass, God of Socrates, Florida, On the Doctrines of Plato)

...through the medium of a translation that Englishmen, at least, are likely to make much acquaintance with him for the future. His Latin is very troublesome to read, and it is not worth reading for its own sake. He is a most amusing writer, with an execrable style, and therefore he is one of the few who ought to gain rather than lose by translation.

"No one," says Professor Ramsay, "can peruse a few pages of Apuleius without being at once impressed with his conspicuous excellencies and his glaring defects. We find everywhere an exuberant play of fancy, liveliness, humor, wit, learning, acuteness, and not unfrequently real eloquence. On the other hand, no style can be more vicious. It is in the highest degree unnatural, both in its general tone and in the phraseology employed. The former is disfigured by the constant recurrence of ingenious but forced and learned conceits and studied prettinesses, while the latter is remarkable for the multitude of obsolete words ostentatiously paraded in almost every sentence. The greater number of these are to be found in the extant compositions of the oldest dramatic writers, and in quotations preserved by the grammarians; and those for which no authority can be produced were, in all probability, drawn from the same source, and not arbitrarily coined to answer the purpose of the moment, as some critics have imagined. The least faulty, perhaps, of all, is the Apologia. Here he spoke from deep feeling; and although we may in many places detect the inveterate affectation of the rhetorician, yet there is often a bold, manly, straightforward heartiness and truth, which we seek in vain in those compositions where his feelings were less touched."

Of all the voluminous writings of Apuleius, there are only six extant of unquestioned authenticity. Two we have already named; the third is a dissertation on the God of Socrates, a work that has been roughly attacked by St. Augustine; the fourth a treatise on the Doctrines of Plato; the fifth the book entitled Florida, which is commonly supposed to be an anthology from the orations of Apuleius, collected either by himself or one of his admirers, but more probably a collection of passages intended as introductions to sundry declamations, or to be introduced, as occasion might...