ice. The virtue should come
first, and then the speech respecting it. Cicero seems to imply that, if
the speech be there, the virtue may be assumed.

But it has to be acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to
the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers
after the [Greek: to kalon].[242] We must recognize the fact that the
Romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the Greeks, and, having
described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up
toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should
it ever be attained. It is so in the De Oratore, as to which we must
begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not to be found
in any House of Commons. No Conservative and no Liberal need fear that
he will be put out of court by the coming of this perfectly eloquent
man. But this Cicero of whom we are speaking has been he who has been
most often quoted for his perfections.[243] The running after an
impossible hero throws a damp over the whole search. When no one can
expect to find the thing sought for, who can seek diligently? By degrees
the ambitious student becomes aware that it is impossible, and is then
carried on by a desire to see how he is to win a second or a third
place, if so much may be accorded to him. In his inquiries he will find
that the Cicero, if he look to Quintilian or Tacitus--or the Crassus, if
he look to Cicero--is so set before him as the true model; and with that
he may be content.

The De Oratore is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as I
think, the pleasantest to read. It was followed, after ten years, by the
Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, and then by the Orator. But in all of
them he charms us rather by his example than instructs us by his
precepts. He will never make us believe, for instance, that a man who
talks well will on that account be better than a man who thinks well;
but he does make us believe that a man who talks as Cicero knew how to
do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words,
when listening to them is no longer possible, is a great delight. Having
done that, he has no doubt carried his object. He was too much a man of
the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself.
Oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself, with
the Romans, the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of
fighting. Literature had not as yet assu