you able to expose the life of Verres, as it must be done, to divide
it into parts and make everything clear? In doing all this, though
nature should have assisted you"--as it has not at all, is of course
implied--"if from your earliest childhood you had been imbued
with letters; if you had learned Greek at Athens instead of at
Lilybaeum--Latin in Rome instead of in Sicily--still would it not be a
task beyond your strength to undertake such a case, so widely thought
of, to complete it by your industry, and then to grasp it in your
memory; to make it plain by your eloquence, and to support it with
voice and strength sufficient? 'Have I these gifts,' you will ask.
Would that I had! But from my childhood I have done all that I could
to attain them."[108]

Cicero makes his points so well that I would fain go through the whole
speech, were it not that a similar reason might induce me to give
abridgments of all his speeches. It may not be that the readers of
these orations will always sympathize with the orator in the matter
which he has in hand--though his power over words is so great as to
carry the reader with him very generally, even at this distance
of time--but the neatness with which the weapon is used, the
effectiveness of the thrust for the purpose intended, the certainty
with which the nail is hit on the head--never with an expenditure of
unnecessary force, but always with the exact strength wanted for the
purpose--these are the characteristics of Cicero's speeches which
carry the reader on with a delight which he will want to share with
others, as a man when he has heard a good story instantly wishes to
tell it again. And with Cicero we are charmed by the modernness, by
the tone of to-day, which his language takes. The rapid way in which
he runs from scorn to pity, from pity to anger, from anger to public
zeal, and then instantly to irony and ridicule, implies a lightness of