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a state, not far removed from idiotism. several small fragments, there are two treatises of this author almost entire. One upon the character of an oration in five books, and one upon ideas in two. They are yet in high estimation, and have sometimes been preferred even to the work of Aristotle.

I pass over the writings of Aristides, Apsines, Sopater, Alexander, Menander, Minucian, Cyrus, Apthonius, Theon, Ulpian, Tiberius, and Severus, who all lived near the time of Lucian and Her. There are short treatises on various mogenes. rhetorical subjects by all these writers; which contain little else but repetitions of the precepts, taught by Aristotle and Hermogenes. But Longinus must not be thus slightly noticed. work upon the sublime should be studied by every orator, and even by every writer in any department of literature. Though confined to a single subject, that subject is sublimity; though gnawed and mutilated by the tooth of time into a mere fragment, it is a fragment from the table of the gods.

His

With Longinus the rhetorical genius of Greece expired; and preserved to its last gasp the proud preeminence of its youth. The lumi

nary, which had so long enlightened the world, after languishing long in decline, at the moment of extinction, kindled into a blaze of transient glory. Longinus lived in the third century of the christian era. He was at once the rhetorical instructer and minister of state to Zenobia, the celebrated queen of Palmyra. With the prerogative of genuine eloquence he inspired her heroic sentiments into the mind of the princess. But he could not convert a people, degraded by servitude, into a nation of heroes. Zenobia sunk before the victorious legions of Aurelian; and Longinus, like the great orators of better days, paid the usual tribute of transcendent genius, the forfeit of his life, to the principles of an unconquerable soul.

Here I shall conclude the review of the Grecian rhetoricians. It was my first intention, upon mentioning their works, to have given you a brief analytical survey of their contents. This however I soon found would require a course of lectures by itself. Perhaps at some future time, when the principles of the science shall be more familiar to your minds, I shall undertake to make you better acquainted with these venerable relics of antiquity, many of which are so contemptuously undervalued by modern writers. You will also

remark, that I have yet spoken only of the rhetoricians, and have left the orators and their works for future consideration. In pursuance of this plan I shall in my next lecture call your attention to the history of the science at Rome.

LECTURE IV.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS of oratory at ROME.

THE origin of the Grecian, and Roman republics, though equally involved in the obscurities and uncertainties of fabulous events, present one remarkable distinction, which continues perceptible in the progress of their history, through a succession of several centuries. The first principle of human association in Greece, as far as it can be traced, was common consent. At Rome it was force. This striking difference of character is perceptible even in the fables, which form the ba sis of the respective histories. Thus, while in Greece it was the harp of Orpheus and the lyre of Amphion, which attracted mankind by the fascinations of pleasure into the ties of civil society, the

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founder of the Roman state is exhibited, as begotten by the god of battles; suckled in his infancy by a wolf; cementing the walls of his rising city with the blood of fraternal murder; and finding no expedient for its population but rape; no means for its subsistence but rapine. It is among the natural consequences of this contrast in the foundations of their municipal associations, that the powers of eloquence were so early discovered among the Greeks, and remained so long concealed among the Romans. Violence and persuasion, being in their nature as opposite to each other, as light and darkness, can never exist together; and by their reciprocal antipathies, wheresoever either predominates, the other must be excluded. Thus we have seen, that in Greece the art of persuasion by speech was held in honor and in exercise of power from the first moment, that any real fact can be discerned. In the Grecian annals history and oratory make their first appearance, entering hand in hand upon the scene. But so far are these personages from presenting themselves on the Roman theatre together, that the first notice we have of rhetoric, in the imperial city, is a decree of the senate, passed in the five hundred and ninety second year from its foundation, and command

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