e of health, to attend a debate of
the first importance. Nothing could detain him from the service of his
country. The dying notes of the BRITISH SWAN were heard in the House
of Peers. He was conveyed to his own house, and on the eleventh of May
1778, he breathed his last. The news reached the House of Commons late
in the evening, when Colonel BARRE had the honour of being the first
to shed a patriot tear on that melancholy occasion. In a strain of
manly sorrow, and with that unprepared eloquence which the heart
inspires, he moved for a funeral at the public expence, and a monument
to the memory of virtue and departed genius. By performing that pious
office, Colonel BARRE may be said to have made his own name immortal.
History will record the transaction.

[g] Messala Corvinus is often, in this Dialogue, called Corvinus only.
See s. xii. note [e].

[h] Appius Claudius was censor in the year of Rome 442; dictator, 465;
and, having at a very advanced age lost his sight, he became better
known by the name of Appius Caecus. Afterwards, A.U. 472, when Pyrrhus,
by his ambassador, offered terms of peace, and a treaty of alliance,
Appius, whom blindness, and the infirmities of age, had for some time
withheld from public business, desired to be conveyed in a litter to
the senate-house. Being conducted to his place, he delivered his
sentiments in so forcible a manner, that the fathers resolved to
prosecute the war, and never to hear of an accommodation, till Italy
was evacuated by Pyrrhus and his army. See Livy, b. xiii. s. 31.
Cicero relates the same fact in his CATO MAJOR, and further adds, that
the speech made by APPIUS CAECUS was then extant. Ovid mentions the
temple of Bellona, built and dedicated by Appius, who, when blind, saw
every thing by the light of his understanding, and rejected all terms
of accommodation with Pyrrhus.

Hac sacrata die Tusco Bellona duello
Dicitur, et Latio prospera semper adest.
Appius est auctor, Pyrrho qui pace negata
Multum animo vidit, lumine caecus erat.
FASTORUM lib vi. ver. 201.

[i] Quintilian acknowledges this fact, with his usual candour. The
question concerning Attic and Asiatic eloquence was of long standing.
The style of the former was close, pure, and elegant; the latter was
said to be diffuse and ostentatious. In the ATTIC, nothing was idle,
nothing redundant: the ASIATIC swelled above all bounds, affecting to
dazzle by strokes of wi