been uncommonly vehement and ardent; which, from the manner of his composition, we are naturally led to believe. The character which one forms of him, from reading his works, is of the austere, rather than the gentle kind. He is, on every occasion, grave, serious, passionate; takes every thing on a high tone; never lets himself down, nor attempts any thing like pleasantry. If any fault can be found with his admirable eloquence, it is, that he sometimes borders on the hard and dry. He may be thought to want smoothness and grace; which Dionysius of Halicarnassus.attributes to his imitating too closely the manner of Thucydides, who was his great model for style, and whose history he is said to have written eight times over with his own hand. But these defects are far more than compensated, by that admirable and masterly force of masculine eloquence, which, as it overpowered all who heard it, cannot, at this day, be read without emotion.

AFTER the days of Demosthenes, Greece lost her liberty ; eloquence of course languished, and relapsed again into the feeble manner introduced by the rhetoricians and sophists. Demetrius Phalerius, who lived in the next age to Demosthenes, attained indeed some character, but he is represented to us as a flowery, rather than a persuasive speaker, who aimed at grace rather than

substance. "Delectabat Athenienses," says Cicero, "magis quam inflammabat."-" He amused the "Athenians rather than warmed them." And after his time we hear of no more Grecian orators of any note.

LECTURE XXVI.

HISTORY OF ELOQUENCE CONTINUED.— ROMAN ELOQUENCE.-CICERO.-MODERN ELOQUENCE.

HAVING treated of the rise of eloquence, and of its state among the Greeks, we now proceed to consider its progress among the Romans, where we shall find one model, at least, of eloquence, in its most splendid and illustrious form. The Romans were long a martial nation, altogether rude, and unskilled in arts of any kind. Arts were of late introduction among them; they were not known till after the conquest of Greece; and the Romans always acknowledge the Grecians as their masters in every part of learning:

Grecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio *.

HOR. Epist. ad Aug,

* When conquer'd Greece brought in her captive arts,
She triumph'd o'er her savage conquerors' hearts;
Taught our rough verse its numbers to refine,
And our rude style with elegance to shine.

FRANCIS.

As the Romans derived their eloquence, poetry, and learning, from the Greeks, so they must be confessed to be far inferior to them in genius for all these accomplishments. They were a more grave and magnificent, but a less acute and sprightly people. They had neither the vivacity -nor the sensibility of the Greeks; their passions were not so easily moved, nor their conceptions so lively; in comparison of them they were a phlegmatic nation. Their language resembled their character; it was regular, firm, and stately; but wanted that simple and expressive naiveté, and, in particular, that flexibility to suit every different mode and spe cies of composition, for which the Greek tongue is distinguished above that of every other country:

Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo
Musa loqui

ARS. POET.

And hence, when we compare together the various rival productions of Greece and Rome, we shall always find this distinction obtain, that in the Greek productions there is more native genius; in the Roman, more regularity and art. What the Greeks invented, the Romans polished; the one was the original, rough sometimes, and incorrect; the other, a finished copy.

* To her lov'd Greeks the muse indulgent gave,
To her lov'd Greeks with greatness to conceive;
And in sublimer tone their language raise :
Her Greeks were only covetous of praise.

FRANCIS.

As the Roman government, during the republic, was of the popular kind, there is no doubt but that, in the hands of the leading men, public speaking became early an engine of government, and was employed for gaining distinction and power. But in the rude unpolished times of the state, their speaking was hardly of that sort that could be called eloquence. Though Cicero, in his treatise De Claris Oratoribus," endeavours to give some reputation to the elder Cato, and those who were his contemporaries, yet he acknowledges it to have been "Asperum et horridum genus dicendi," a rude and harsh strain of speech. It was not till a short time preceding Cicero's age, that the Roman orators rose into any note. Crassus and Antonius, two of the speakers in the dialogue De Oratore, appear to have been the most eminent, whose different manners Cicero describes with great beauty in that dialogue, and in his other rhetorical works. But as none of their productions are extant, nor any of Hortensius's, who was Cicero's contemporary and rival at the bar, it is needless to transcribe from Cicero's writings the account which he gives of those great men, and of the character of their eloquence *.

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Such as are desirous of particular information on this head, had better have recourse to the original, by reading Cicero's three books De Oratore, and his other two treatises, intitled, the one, Brutus, sive de Claris Oratoribus; the other, Orator, ad. M. Brutum; which, on several accounts, well deserve perusal.