43 



tion for forensic talent, had in the early part of their lives, 

 and during their course of academic education, been distin- 

 guished for their abilities in severer studies. The great Athe- 

 nian orator derives a considerable share of his renown, from a 

 strict attention to cleanness of arrangement and strength of 

 reasoning, even in the full career of his rapid and impetuous 

 eloquence; in the very " whirlwind of his passion" his pre- 

 sence of mind never forsakes him, he keeps his eye steadily 

 fixed on the course through which he is to direct his own argu- 

 ment, and marks attentively the obstacles which his rivals or 

 enemies may have opposed to his progress. And to account 

 for this happy union of emotion and calmness, of transport 

 and deliberation, we are told that he was a pupil of that 

 school over whose gate it was written, that no one ignorant 

 of geometry should enter. Servius Sulpicius, according to 

 Cicero, was the greatest orator among those distinguished 

 for legal knowledge, and the most distinguished for legal 

 knowledge among the eminent orators ; though there were 

 many experienced civilians and acute pleaders at the time, 

 he was the only one who understood Law as an art, who had 

 regularly digested and methodised it, who had reduced it to 

 settled principles, and given it a scientific appearance. — 

 " This^' says the orator, * " he would never have effected by 

 the knowledge of law alone, had he not also learned that 

 Art, which teaches to distribute an entire subject into it's 

 parts, to explain what was unknown by defi:nitions, and elu- 



* Cicero — Brut. 



