XXVI 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



times eloquence ranked high at Home, as a per- 

 sonal accomplishment, and a means of -obtaining 1 

 or preserving power : from the date of the first 

 appearance of polite learning, the art of rhetoric 

 began to be sedulously cultivated. It would be 

 easy to crowd a long paragraph with the names 

 of distinguished speakers, who owed to their 

 eminence in this respect the proudest political 

 triumphs, Hut of their harangues little more is 

 left than of their greatness. On the field of lit- 

 erature Cicero towers alone, to maintain the 

 cause of Latin against Grecian eloquence, and 

 to demonstrate the inferiority of the one to the 

 other. Various reasons have been assigned for 

 the subordination of Roman oratory when put in 

 contrast with that of the Greeks; but the true 

 causes were inherent and unavoidable. One of 

 these causes lies in the innate difference of the 

 Greek and Latin languages; the Greek, by its 

 forms and idioms, susceptible of vast copiousness, 

 and an unwearied flow of thought, pressing on, 

 through clauses and sentences, in regular pro- 

 gression; the Latin, trained to a more periodic 

 turn of composition, yielding indeed ample room 

 tor diffuse expression and imagery, but not 

 chaining thought to thought with the same logi- 

 cal coherence or magnetic impulse and attraction. 

 This discrepance of the two tongues becomes 

 extremely obvious in lyric poetry. It is im- 

 possible not to perceive it in comparing Horace 

 with Pindar. And we hold that it prevails hard- 

 ly less in the higher branches of eloquence : that 

 it would have been impracticable for Cicero to 

 speak in the strain of Demosthenes with equal 

 closeness, equal energy, and a like impetuosity 

 of passion, feeling, and argument, kindling into 

 fire from their own vehemence, and disdaining 

 all splendour that does not flame out naturally 

 from the subject itself and the most direct mode 

 of treating it. The other great cause of the im- 

 perfection of Latin oratory arises from the ne- 

 cessarily artificial nature of all imitation. In 

 Cicero we uniformly see the rhetorician ; in 

 Demosthenes we see the man. Demosthenes, 

 such was his skill, seems anxious merely about 

 what he is to say ; Cicero, about how he is to 

 say it. He was right in rating high the difficul- 

 ties of the orator's art ; he was either wrong in 

 the method he took to master them, or deficient 

 in power to do so. Partly, perhaps, he was 

 scared by the formidable estimate made by him- 

 self of the endowments requisite for success in 

 public speaking. These, as enumerated by Ci- 

 cero, we may almost compare with the list of ac- 

 complishments, which Imlac* demands in the 



See Rasselas. 



poet ; and here, too, we are tempted to exclaim, 

 " enough ! thou hast convinced us, that no human 

 being can ever be an orator." 



At least, to be a true one, he must not study 

 with too much devotion in the school of Cicero. 

 There is, however, another department of intel- 

 lectual exertion, in which Cicero may be men- 

 tioned as a model, to whose excellence hardly a 

 sufficient tribute has been paid. In philosophy, 

 in the application of original thought to tin- 

 analysis of mind, and of the moral sense, and to 

 the illustration of their phenomena, his rank is 

 low : but as a philosophic writer he cannot be 

 placed too high. For the exposition of principles 

 imparted by others his genius and style were 

 admirably fitted. Everything conspires to make 

 us regard him, in this capacity, with unalloyed 

 pleasure. His ethical and metaphysical labours 

 were crowded into the close of his active life, 

 and fill up the picture of an amiable character 

 The tumults of ambition, the noise of forensic 

 and senatorial warfare, the anxieties of personal 

 danger, seem forgotten, as he receives and re- 

 peats the lessons of Plato. 



Contemporary with Caesar and Cicero was 

 LUCRETIUS,* the most original, and perhaps, in 

 spite of his subject, the most beautiful of the 

 Latin poets. It was with reference to the confi- 

 dent and commanding manner of this noble 

 writer, often rising into a high pitch of scornful 

 indignation, that Dryden ascribed to him a per- 

 petual dictatorship : but the same sort of arbi- 

 trary will and power may be perceived in his 

 treatment of the stubborn topics, on which a fond 

 attachment to the Epicurean philosophy induced 

 him to exercise his genius. If in anything his 

 subject controlled him, it was in suggesting, as 

 consonant with its own quaintness and austerity, 

 the use of a diction still overrun, even at that 

 Ciceronian era, with the rust of preceding times. 

 But in how many points did he control his sub- 

 ject ! a subject so extensive indeed, yet, poeti- 

 cally considered, so unpromising as "the nature 

 of things." With what a soul does he animate 

 the abstract doctrines of his Grecian master ! 

 With what a bodily grace and presence does he 

 then clothe them, and bring them down into the 

 region of sense, and equip them with a picturesque 

 and brilliant garniture ! With what charming 

 episodes he relieves the dulness of didactic mat- 

 ter ; and even where the heavy theme appears 

 settling into a "palpable obscure," what quick 

 flashes are thrown out of the deepest gloom ! If 

 it be true that Lucretius composed his poem 

 during the lucid intervals of a mental disease, 



* B.C. 95-52. 



