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the attention due to the present. If the old poets, Ennius and 

 LuciHus, in the days of Horace, were the great themes of panegyric, 

 no wonder if, in after times, the writers of the Augustan age should 

 be thought to have so concentrated in themselves all the rays of 

 eloquence and poetry, as to leave nothing to their successors but 

 darkness and despair. But, though it be granted that they far sur- 

 passed their followers, it cannot be concluded that a taste for lite- 

 rature was not more general in succeeding times, and that some real 

 genius was not always starting up, among the tribes of sophists and 

 poetasters, to vindicate the honor of true taste, and prevent a total 

 declension into barbarism. 



Eloquence in Rome being so indispensible to success in civil, 

 and frequently, in military employments, proved a very important 

 part of education, and its culture necessarily involved that of other 

 branches of literature. Hence it happened, for a long series of 

 years, that the emperors tliemselves were often renowned, not only 

 for their proficiency in oratory and poetry, but for their patronage 

 of men of letters, in which they seem to have made Augustus their 

 model, and wisely considered it as a necessary part of the imperial 

 character. Tiberius, that monster of debauchery, was fond of the 

 liberal; arts, and , though he is perstringed by Juvenal for the 

 verbosity of his style, he was no mean orator in his vernacular 

 tongue, which he spoke with great fluency. He also wrote lyric 

 verses, and shewed his esteem for genius by erecting statues of the 

 poets Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius. Even the atrocious 

 Caligula shewed himself willing to render a service to history, by 

 allowing the books of Titus Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, and 

 Cassius Severus, which had been prohibited in the reign of Tibe- 

 rius, to be freely perused. The very vanity which led him to dis- 

 play his eloquence in the senate, in behalf of friend or foe, as the 



