was peculiar to himself, took every opportunity to refute the principles
of their art. His instructive conferences produced a number of intelligent
men, and _Philosophy_ is said to have derived her birth from him;--not the
doctrine of _Physics_, which was of an earlier date, but that Philosophy
which treats of men, and manners, and of the nature of good and evil. But
as this is foreign to our present subject, we must defer the Philosophers
to another opportunity, and return to the Orators, from whom I have
ventured to make a sort digression.

"When the professors therefore, abovementioned were in the decline of
life, Isocrates made his appearance, whos house stood open to all Greece
as the _School of Eloquence_. He was an accomplished orator, and an
excellent teacher; though he did not display his talents in the Forum, but
cherished and improved that glory within the walls of his academy, which,
in my opinion, no poet has ever yet acquired. He composed many valuable
specimens of his art, and taught the principles of it to others; and not
only excelled his predecessors in every part of it, but first discovered
that a certain _metre_ should be observed in prose, though totally
different from the measured rhyme of the poets. Before _him_, the
artificial structure and harmony of language was unknown;--or if there are
any traces of it to be discovered, they appear to have been made without
design; which, perhaps, will be thought a beauty:--but whatever it may be
deemed, it was, in the present case, the effect rather of native genius,
or of accident, than of art and observation. For mere nature itself will
measure and limit our sentences by a convenient compass of words; and when
they are thus confined to a moderate flow of expression, they will
frequently have a _numerous_ cadence:--for the ear alone can decide what
is full and complete, and what is deficient; and the course of our
language will necessarily be regulated by our breath, in which it is
excessively disagreeable, not only to fail, but even to labour.