he does not collect the water from rains to remedy a natural dryness,
but flows continually, himself, from a source of living waters, and
seems to have existed by a peculiar gift of Providence, that in him
eloquence might make trial of her whole strength and her most powerful
exertions.

For who can instruct with more exactness, and move with more vehemence?
What orator ever possest so pleasing a manner that the very things he
forcibly wrests from you, you fancy you grant him; and when by his
violence he carries away the judge, yet does the judge seem to himself
to obey his own volition, and not to be swept away by that of another?
Besides, in all he says there is so much authority and weight that you
are ashamed to differ from him in opinion; and it is not the zeal of an
advocate you find in him, but rather the faith and sincerity of a
witness or judge. And what, at the same time, is more admirable, all
these qualities, any one of which could not be attained by another
without infinite pains, seem to be his naturally; so that his
discourses, the most charming, the most harmonious, which possibly can
be heard, retain, notwithstanding, so great an air of happy ease that
they seem to have cost him nothing.

With good reason, therefore, is he said by his contemporaries to reign
at the bar, and he has so far gained the good graces of posterity that
Cicero is now less the name of a man than the name of eloquence itself.
Let us then keep him in view, let him be our model, and let that orator
think he has made considerable progress who has once conceived a love
and taste for Cicero.


_Cæsar_