EARLY LIFE. 43 



especially those less obvious, and would say, " It is 

 too late to doubt of them ; whoever should do so 

 would find he had come too late ; for all men's minds 

 have long ago been made up on the subject." But he 

 ever dwelt on their works having been the result of 

 the greatest care, and of each being a monument of 

 industry; describing Sallust, for instance, as passing 

 his whole time in composition and careful correction. 

 The eloquence of the old orators he would descant on 

 by the hour, and show that its success was due to dil- 

 igent preparation. With some exceptions he much 

 undervalued the modern : of these exceptions Chat- 

 ham was the chief, and he highly commended his 

 method of bringing up his son, notwithstanding he 

 had kept him from a public school. Of that son's 

 eloquence he had formed an estimate strongly affected 

 by his political opinions, which were those of the ad- 

 mirers of the French Eevolution ; and although he 

 avoided the expression of them, it was pretty manifest 

 how he leant, even after its crimes had begun to stag- 

 ger most of its partisans. I found when I had left 

 his class that he was of those who very reluctantly 

 admitted any faults in the Eepublicans. Whatever 

 opinions he held on this subject, he always inculcated 

 the most decided attachment to our own constitution. 

 His taste in all matters of composition was sound and 

 severe. If he admired Seneca more than was strictly 

 just, he gave no preference to him over the purer 

 models; and his liking plainly proceeded from the 

 great storehouse found in his prose writings of moral 



