ugh all this there runs a pervading, may
we not say, a matchless charm. He is most apt in moving compassion; his
mythical digressions show a fluent ease, and he is perfect in bending
his course and finding a way out of them without violence or effort.
Thus when he tells the story of Leto he is really almost a poet; and his
funeral oration shows a declamatory magnificence to which I hardly know
a parallel.

3
Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no touches of character, none of the
versatility, fluency, or declamatory skill of Hyperides. He is, in fact,
almost entirely destitute of all those excellences which I have just
enumerated. When he makes violent efforts to be humorous and witty, the
only laughter he arouses is against himself; and the nearer he tries to
get to the winning grace of Hyperides, the farther he recedes from it.
Had he, for instance, attempted such a task as the little speech in
defence of Phryne or Athenagoras, he would only have added to the
reputation of his rival.

4
Nevertheless all the beauties of Hyperides, however numerous, cannot
make him sublime. He never exhibits strong feeling, has little energy,
rouses no emotion; certainly he never kindles terror in the breast of
his readers. But Demosthenes followed a great master,[1] and drew his
consummate excellences, his high-pitched eloquence, his living passion,
his copiousness, his sagacity, his speed--that mastery and power which
can never be approached--from the highest of sources. These mighty,
these heaven-sent gifts (I dare not call them human), he made his own
both one and all. Therefore, I say, by the noble qualities which he does
possess he remains supreme above all rivals, and throws a cloud over his
failings, silencing by his thunders and blinding by his lightnings the
orators of all ages. Yes, it would be easier to meet the
lightning-stroke with steady eye than to gaze unmoved when his
impassioned eloquence is sending out flash after flash.

[Footnote 1: _I.e._ Thucydides. See the passage of Dionysius quoted
in the Note.]

XXXV

But in the case of Plato and Lysias there is, as I said, a further
difference. Not only is Lysias vastly inferior to Plato in the degree of
his merits, but in their number as well; and at the same time he is as
far ahead of Plato in the number of his faults as he is behind in that
of his merits.

2
What truth, then, was it that was present to those mighty spirits of the
past, who, making wha