placid resignation to ignorance of what cannot be known and would
not be worth knowing--need in the least regret the fact that we do not
know who did.

There are said to be Egyptian letters of immense antiquity and high
development; but once more, I do not profess direct knowledge of them,
and once more I hold that of what a man does not possess direct
knowledge, of that he should not write. Besides, for practical purposes,
all our literature begins with Greek: so to Greek let us turn. We have a
fair bulk of letters in that language. Hercher's _Epistolographi Graeci_
is a big volume, and would not be a small one, if you cut out the Latin
translations. But it is unfortunate that nearly the whole, like the
majority of later Greek literature, is the work of that special class
called rhetoricians--a class for which, though our term "book-makers"
may be a little too derogatory, "men of letters" is rarely (it is
sometimes) applicable, as we use it when we mean to be complimentary.
These letters are still close to "speech," thus meeting in a fashion our
initial requirement, but they are close to the speech of the
"orator"--of the sophisticated speaker to the public--not to that of
genuine conversation. In fact in some cases it would require only the
very slightest change to make those exercitations of the rhetors which
are not called "epistles" definite letters in form, while some of the
best known and characteristic of their works are so entitled.

[Sidenote: THE RHETORICIANS]

It was unfortunate for the Greeks, as it would seem, and for us more
certainly, that letter-writing was so much affected by these
"rhetoricians." This curious class of persons has perhaps been too much
abused: and there is no doubt that very great writers came out of
them--to mention one only in each division--Lucian among the extremely
profane, and St. Augustine among the greatest and most intellectual of
divines. But though their habitual defects are to be found abundantly
enough in modern society, these defects are, with us, as a rule
distributed among different classes; while anciently they were united in
this one. We have our journalists, our book-makers (literary, not
sporting), our platform and parliamentary palaverers, our popular
entertainers; and we also have our pedagogues, scholastic and
collegiate, our scientific and other lecturers, etc. But the Rhetorician
of old was a Jack of all these trades; and he too frequently combined
the triv