sentence or two for hearing plain truths, enters directly on business.

Demosthenes appears to great advantage, when contrasted with Æschines in the celebrated Oration

66

pro Corona." Æschines was his rival in business, and personal enemy; and one of the most distinguished Orators of that age. But when we read the two Orations, Æschines is feeble in comparison of Demosthenes, and makes much less impression on the mind. His reasonings concerning the law that was in question, are indeed very subtile; but his invective against Demosthenes is general, and ill supported. Whereas Demosthenes is a torrent, that nothing can resist. He bears down his antagonist with violence; he draws his character in the strongest colours; and the particular merit of that Oration is, that all the descriptions in it are highly picturesque. There runs through it a strain of magnanimity and high honour: the Orator speaks with that strength and conscious dignity which great actions and public spirit alone inspire. Both orators use great liberties with one another; and, in general, that unrestrained licence which ancient manners permitted, and which was carried by public speakers even to the length of abusive names and downright scurrility, as appears both here and in Cicero's Philippics, hurts and offends a modern ear. What those ancient Orators gained by such a manner in point of freedom and boldness is more than compensated by want of dignity; which seems to give an advantage, in this respect, to the greater decency of modern speaking.

The Style of Demosthenes is strong and concise, though sometimes, it must not be dissembled, harsh and abrupt. His words are very expressive; his arrangement is firm and manly; and though far from being unmusical, yet it seems difficult to find in him that studied, but concealed number and rythmus, which some of the ancient critics are fond of attributing to him. Negligent of these lesser graces, one would rather conceive him to have aimed at that Sublime which lies in sentiment. His action and pronunciation are recorded to have 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

"Delectabat

aimed at grace rather than substance. " Athenienses," says Cicero, "magis quam inflam" mabat." "He amused the Athenians, rather

" than warmed them." And after his time, we hear of no more Grecians Orator 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 acknowledged the Grecians as their masters in every part of learning :

Grecia capta ferum victorem cepit, & artes

Intulit agresti Latio.* - Hor. Epist. ad Aug.

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 naïveté, and, in particular, that flexibility to suit every different mode and species 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.

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 Oratori" bus,” 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. *

The object in this period most worthy to draw our attention, is Cicero himself; whose name alone suggests every thing that is splendid in Oratory. With the history of his life, and with his character as a man and a politician, we have not at present any direct concern. We consider him only as an eloquent Speaker; and, in this view, it is our business to remark both his virtues, and his defects, if he has any. His virtues are, beyond controversy, eminently great. In all his Orations there is high art. He