146 Mr. Harvey’s Obfervations 
* 
‘ 
guage) yet I well know that I do not live in fuch 
** an age as that of Auguftus Cefar, when Meffala,* 
‘** a noble Roman, and the firft orator of his time, 
wrote a book upon each letter of the alphabet, 
and Julius Czfar, as it is well known, employed 
himfelf in writing upon another part of Gram- 
‘t mar,f when he had upon his hands the moft 
** dangerous war in which he was ever engaged.” 
But * the learned of this age,” his Lordfhip remarks 
with fome poignant ridicule, ‘though they be 
*“‘ fo much occupied with facts of natural hiftory, 
** minerals, plants, flies, and reptiles, that they 
** have no time to apply to the hiftory and philo- 
** fophy of their own fpecies ; yet I fhould think 
** that 
66 
6 
os 
* The Hiltory of the Origin and Progrefs of Language, 
vol. ii, page 239. Concerning Meflala, vide Ciceron. de 
Claris Oratoribus, fub finem. Horace and Tibullus make 
honorable mention of the fame great orator, to whom the 
Ciris of Virgil is infcribed. s 
See alfo Suetonius in his Life of Claudius Cefar, of 
whom he fays: Novas etiam commentus eft litteras tres, ac 
numero veterum quali maxime neceflarias addidit. De 
quarum ratione, cum privatus adhuc, volumen edidiffet. 
Lib, v.cap. 41. And Tacitus takes notice of the fame, in 
Annalium libri xi. capitibus 1g and 14, See likewife Juftus 
Lipfius upon this fubjeét, - 
+ De analogia libros duos,—In tranfitu Alpium, as 
Suetonius relates. For they were his two books againft 
Cato, which he wrote about the time of his battle at Munda, 
fo unfortunate for the interefts of Pompey. 
