"The greatest oration of the greatest orator," said Lord Brougham of this speech. The oration abounds in eloquent passages, and in magnificent expressions.

From this oration, which for sarcasm, invective, and declamation, as well as all that is glorious in eloquence, has no equal, in any language, the author selects the following passage, containing the celebrated oath by those who fell at Marathon, and setting forth the public spirit of the Athenians: "The Athenians never were known to live contented in a slavish though secure obedience to unjust and arbitrary power. No. Our whole history is a series of gallant contests for pre-eminence; the whole period of our national existence hath been spent in braving dangers for the sake of glory and renown. And so highly do you esteem such conduct as characteristic of the Athenian spirit, that those of your ancestors who were most eminent for it are ever the most favourite objects of your praise. And with reason; for who can reflect, without astonishment, on the magnanimity of those men who resigned their lands, gave up their city, and embarked in their ships rather than live at the bidding of a stranger? The Athenians of that day looked out for no speaker, no general, to procure them a state of easy slavery. They had the spirit to reject even life, unless they were allowed to enjoy that life in freedom. For it was a principle fixed deeply in every breast, that man was not born to his parents only, but to his country. And mark the distinction. He who regards himself as born only to his parents waits in passive submission for the hour of his natural dissolution. He who considers that he is the child of his country also, volunteers to meet death rather than behold that country reduced to vassalage; and thinks those insults and disgraces which he must endure, in a state enslaved, much more terrible than death.

"Should I attempt to assert that it was I who inspired you with sentiments worthy of your ancestors, I should meet the just resentment of every hearer. No; it is my point to show that such sentiments are properly your own; that they were the sentiments of my country long before my

days. I claim but my share of merit in having acted on such principles in every part of my administration. He, then, who condemns every part of my administration; he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who hath involved the state in terrors and dangers, while he labours to deprive me of present honour, robs you of all the applause of posterity. For, if you now pronounce that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned, it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen, it cannot be that you have acted wrong in encountering danger bravely for the liberty and safety of all Greece. No! I swear it by the spirits of our sires, who rushed upon destruction at Marathon! by those who stood arrayed at Platæa! by those who fought the sea-fight at Salamis! by the men of Artemisium! by the others so many and so brave, who now rest in our public sepulchres! all of whom their country judged worthy of the same honour; all, I say, Æschines; not those only who were victorious. And with reason. What was the part of gallent men, they all performed. Their success was such as the Supreme Ruler of the world dispensed to each."

Panurge, in Rabelais, when in need, practised sixty-three methods of procuring money, the most honest of which was to steal. Æschines, the rival of Demosthenes, likewise left no stone unturned when he got into a tight place. He was guilty of dissimulation, inventions of various kinds, alterations of dates, and texts-all arms, he thought, lawful, in his contest with Demosthenes.

The style of Demosthenes is "strong and concise, though sometimes, it must not be dissembled, harsh, and abrupt. His words are very expressive; his management is firm and manly; and though far from being unmusical, yet it seems difficult to find in him that studied but concealed number and rhythmus, which some of the ancient critics are fond of attributing to him. Negligent of these lesser graces, one would rather conceive him to have aimed at that sublime

which lies in sentiment. His action and pronunciation are recorded to have been uncommonly vehement and ardent; which, from the manner of his composition, we are naturally led to believe. The character which one forms of him, from reading his works, is of the austere, rather than the gentle kind. He is on every occasion grave, serious, passionate; takes everything on a high tone; never lets himself down, nor attempts anything like pleasantry. If any fault can be found with his admirable eloquence, it is, that he sometimes borders on the high and dry. He may be thought to want smoothness and grace, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus attributes to his imitating too closely the manner of Thucydides, who was his great model for style, and whose history he is said to have written eight times over with his own hand. But these defects are far more than compensated, by that admirable and masterly force of masculine eloquence which, as it overpowered all who heard it, cannot at this day be read without emotion." Another critic says: "The style of Demosthenes is so strong, so close and nervous; it is everywhere so just, so exactly concise, that there is nothing too much or too little. What distinguishes his eloquence is the impetuosity of the expression, the choice of words, and the beauty of the disposition; which, being supported throughout and accompanied with force and sweetness, keeps the attention of the judges perpetually fixed."

"What we admire in Demosthenes is the plan, the series, and the order and disposition of the oration; it is the strength of the proofs, the solidity of the arguments, the grandeur and nobleness of the sentiments and of the style, the vivacity of the turns and figures; in a word, the wonderful art of representing the subjects he treats in all their lustre, and displaying them in all their strength."

The author of the Dialogues Concerning Eloquence says: "Demosthenes moves, warms, and captivates the heart. Every oration of his is a close chain of reasoning that represents the generous notions of a soul who disdains any thought that is not great. His discourses gradually increase in force by greater light and new reasons, which

are always illustrated by bold figures and lively images. One cannot but see that he has the good of the republic entirely at heart, and that nature itself speaks in all his transports, for his artful address is so masterly that it never appears. Nothing ever equalled the force and vehemence of his discourses."

To his admirable delivery, Demosthenes, in his orations, joined the equal force of great and noble expressions, of lively descriptions, of pathetic passages, and of rhetorical images proper to affect, and make strong impressions upon the mind. In short, nearly all his orations are full of expressive figures, of frequent apostrophes, and reiterated interrogations, which gave life and vigour to, and animated all he said.

Longinus, in his comparison between Demosthenes and Cicero, compares the eloquence of the former to lightning, and of the latter to a great fire. He says the eloquence of Demosthenes is a whirlwind and a clap of thunder that overturns all things, and that of Cicero like a great fire which devours all things. So that violence and impetuousness make up the character of Demosthenes' eloquence, and the progress of a great fire, which advances by degrees, together with the heat and insinuating virtue of fire, are the principal qualities of that of Cicero. The Grecian breaks out like thunder. The Roman warms and inflames like a great fire. Longinus therefore adds that Demosthenes never failed of success, when he was to strike terror into the minds of his audience, and to work upon them by strong representations and violent motions. But when it was necessary to go to the very heart, and to insinuate one's self into the mind, by all those graces and pleasing charms which eloquence is mistress of; then it was that Cicero's art was triumphant, and that his diffused, enlarged discourse. succeeded far better than the more close and concise style of Demosthenes; and the one is no more prevalent by the eclat, the surprising strength of his reasons, than the other is by the warming and affecting emotions he raises.

It is said that before the time of Demosthenes, "there

existed three distinct styles of eloquence: that of Lysias, mild and persuasive, quietly engaged the attention, and won the assent of an audience; that of Thucydides, bold and animated, awakened the feelings and powerfully forced conviction on the mind; while that of Isocrates was, as it were, a combination of the two former./Demosthenes can scarcely be said to have proposed any individual as a model, although he bestowed so much untiring labor on the histoian of the Peloponnesian war. He rather culled all that was valuable from the various styles of his great predecessors, working them up, and blending them into one harmonious whole: not, however, that there is such a uniformity or mannerism in his works as prevents him from applying himself with versatility to a variety of subjects; on the contrary, he seems to have had the power of carrying each individual style to perfection, and of adapting himself with equal excellence to each successive topic. In the general structure of many of his sentences, he resembles Thucydides; but he is more simple and perspicuous, and better calculated to be quickly comprehended by an audience. On the other hand his clearness in narration, his elegance and purity of diction, and (to borrow a metaphor from a sister art) his correct keeping, remind the reader of Lysias. But the argumentative part of the speeches of Lysias are often deficient in vigour; whereas earnestness, power, zeal, rapidity, and passion, all exemplified in plain, unornamented language, and a strain of close, business-like reasoning, are the distinctive characteristics of Demosthenes. The general tone of his oratory was admirably adapted to an Athenian audience, constituted as it was of those whose habits of life were mechanical, and of those whom ambition or taste had led to the cultivation of literature. The former were captivated by sheer sense, urged with masculine force and inextinguishable spirit, and by the forcible application of plain truths; and yet there was enough of grace and variety to please more learned and fastidious auditors." Another writer says: "His style is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to the sense; it is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art; it