carried to perfection in the Ciceronian and Augustan ages. The language
did not greatly improve in smoothness, or adaptation to express finished
thought. The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between Ennius, Pacuvius,
and Accius, but it may be questioned whether the advance would be
perceptible by us. Still the _labor limae_ unsparingly employed by
Terence, the rules of good writing laid down by Lucilius, and the labours
of the great grammarians and orators at the close of the period, prepared
the language for that rapid development which it at once assumed in the
masterly hands of Cicero.

The Second Period represents the highest excellence in prose and poetry.
The prose era came first, and is signalised by the names of Cicero,
Sallust, and Caesar. The celebrated writers were now mostly men of action
and high position in the state. The principles of the language had become
fixed; its grammatical construction was thoroughly understood, and its
peculiar genius wisely adapted to those forms of composition in which it
was naturally capable of excelling. The perfection of poetry was not
attained until the time of Augustus. Two poets of the highest renown had
indeed flourished in the republican period; but though endowed with lofty
genius they are greatly inferior to their successors in sustained art,
_e.g._ the constructions of prose still dominate unduly in the domain of
verse, and the intricacies of rhythm are not fully mastered. On the other
hand, prose has, in the Augustan age, lost somewhat of its breadth and
vigour. Even the beautiful style of Livy shows traces of that intrusion of
the poetic element which made such destructive inroads into the manner of
the later prose writers. In this period the writers as a rule are not
public men, but belong to what we should call the literary class. They
wrote not for the public but for the select circle of educated men whose
ranks were gradually narrowing their limits to the great injury of
literature. If we ask which of the two sections of this period marks the