as a second title, De Optimo Genere Dicendi--as though the
five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory
in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding
work is on the best mode of oratory. Readers who may wish to carry these
in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few
pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from AEschines and
Demosthenes. The purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of
romance may be produced--the perfect orator.

Here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain
discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and
thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume,
whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. But here,
in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his
discourse. He distinguishes three styles of eloquence--the simple, the
moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties
to perform. He must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must
place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. He
explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that
eloquence depends wholly on elocution. He tells us that the
philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his
ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and
work of the Forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. Then he teaches us how
each of the three styles should be treated--the simple, the moderate,
and the sublime--and shows us how to vary them. He informs us what laws
we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what
metaphors. He then considers the words we should use, and makes us
understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of
sound. In this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a Roman, had to
deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our
British ears; and I am not sure that we can follow him with rapture
into all the mysteries of the Poeon, the Dochmius, and the Dichoreus.
What he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder
at the elaborate study given to it; but I doubt whether we here do not
read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be
removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our
lives.

There are, again, delightful morsels he