and sketches
of character are as good as anything in ancient eloquence. I have never,
till now, rated him fairly.

As to Latin, I am just finishing Lucan, who remains pretty much where he
was in my opinion; and I am busily engaged with Cicero, whose character,
moral and intellectual, interests me prodigiously. I think that I see
the whole man through and through. But this is too vast a subject for
a letter. I have gone through all Ovid's poems. I admire him; but I was
tired to death before I got to the end. I amused myself one evening with
turning over the Metamorphoses, to see if I could find any passage of
ten lines which could, by possibility, have been written by Virgil.
Whether I was in ill luck or no I cannot tell; but I hunted for half
an hour without the smallest success. At last I chanced to light on a
little passage more Virgilian, to my thinking, than Virgil himself. Tell
me what you say to my criticism. It is part of Apollo's speech to the
laurel

Semper habebunt
Te coma, te citharae, te nostrae, laure, pharetrae
Tu ducibus Latiis aderis, cum laeta triumphum
Vox canet, et longas visent Capitolia pompas.
Portibus Augustis cadem fidissima custos
Ante fores stabis, mediamque tuebere quercum.

As to other Latin writers, Sallust has gone sadly down in my opinion.
Caesar has risen wonderfully. I think him fully entitled to Cicero's
praise. [In the dialogue "De Claris Oratoribus" Cicero makes Atticus say
that 'A consummate judge of style (who is evidently intended for Cicero
himself,) pronounces Caesar's Latin to be the most elegant, with one
implied exception, that had ever been heard in the Senate or the Forum'.
Atticus then goes on to detail at full length a compliment which Caesar
had paid to Cicero's powers of expression; and Brutus declares with
enthusiasm that such praise, coming from such a quarter, is worth more
than a Triumph, as Triumphs were then given; and inferior in value
only to the honours which were voted to the statesman who had baffled
Catiline. The whole passage is a model of self-glorification, exquisite
in skill and finish.] He has won the honour of an excellent historian
while attempting merely to give hints for history. But what are they
all to the great Athenian? I do assure you that there is no prose
composition in the world, not even the De Corona, which I place so high
as the seventh book of Thucydides. It is the ne plus ultra of human art.
I was deligh