"favour; on one hand, the hardy strength "of the German, who detests slavery, on "the other, the lively and ingenuous Frank,

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open in disposition as in name; here, the "stedfast valour of the Spaniard; there, the "firm and discreet magnanimity of the "Italian pass in review before me. "Wherever, in fine, free, generous, and high-minded spirits prudently conceal or openly avow themselves, there I look for "the silent approbation of some, and the undisguised welcome of others; there "some will meet me with eagerness and applause, while others, subdued by Truth, "surrender themselves at length to its 66 power. Surrounded by such a force, "collected from the extremity of Spain to "the remotest confines of India, I seem to

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ignotos, animi sensus mecum conjuctissimos. Hinc Germanorum virile et infestum servituti robur, inde Francorum vividi dignìque nomine liberales impetus, hine Hispanorum consulta virtus, Italorum inde sedata suìque compos magnanimitas ob oculos versatur. Quicquid uspiam liberorum pectorum quicquid ingenui, quicquid magnanimi aut prudens latet aut se palàm profitetur, alii tacitè favere, alii apertè suffragari, accurrere alii et plausu accipere, alii tandem vero victi, dedititios se tradere. Videor jam mihi, tantis circumseptus copiis, ab Herculeis usque columnis ad extremos Li

"lead back, as if from a vast distance, Li

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berty, long a fugitive and an exile, to her "home among the Nations."

With MILTON's facilities of access to the originals of Greece, it was natural for him to profit of the bold and cogent style by which they communicated to popular Meetings the persuasion of their minds *. To assist him in conveying a forceful meaning at this important crisis, Athens would have had strong attractions for him, if his early bias had not drawn him, as usual, to his favourite resorts. Whither could he have gone for assistance better suited to the nature and end of these labours?

It may still be allowed, that it is possible he might have run his eye over Plautus in quest of such angry and scornful appellations as Curculio, Balatro perditissimus, and

beri Patris terminos, Libertatem diu pulsam atque exulem, longo intervallo domum ubique gentium reducere." Defensio Secunda.

* "I cannot say, that I am utterly untrained in those "rules which best Rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted "with those examples which the prime Authours of Eloquence have written in any learned tongue."

Apology for Smectymnuus, Sect. 11.

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too many beside, to hurl back on his adversary, whom he accuses of having gleaned from the self-same Play-writer the choicest morsels of scurrility in the Regi Sanguinis Clamor: "Hic Salmasii carnifex quasi sit, Syri Damæ filius, Lorarios invocat et "Cadmum; veratro deinde ebrius, totam, quicquid, ubique est, Servulorum et Bal"lionum sentinam, ex Indice Plautino evo"mit ;"&c. (Pr. W. II. 326. ed. 1738.) Hence a fair presumption arises, that Toland misremembered this passage, and was inaccurate as to its import. At any rate, I take this to be the extent of our Authour's obligation to the Roman Comedian. I cannot discern a solitary sentence in the Defences of the English People which should incline any

one to assent to more.

Without this explanation the depreciating tendency of this relation must work a prejudice in the public estimation against these controversial productions much to their disfavour, as if they contained nothing beyond verbal argumentation, and the contradictory asseverations, the vituperative declamation, and the endless recriminations of political contention. Such misrepresentation by lowering them in general apprehension to

a mere tissue of polemic, disgustful, and repulsive acrimony, must have contributed to deter very many from opening them. There can be little hesitation, but that this was through carelessness of expression. An able Scholar, he himself the Writer of a Latin Philippic, and a zealous friend to the Liberties of England, Toland would not have acquiesced in the injurious impression which his incautious statement must create while unexplained. Hobbes was devoted to absolute Government, and held alike in aversion the religious tenets of Salmasius and MILTON; yet he possessed too much Learning himself to deny their respective writings the praise of superiour compositions. They are, he took occasion to observe, very good Latin both, and hardly to be judged which is the better*.

I forbear to substantiate the fact by bringing parallelisms immediately under view, as they would swell this part of these preliminary strictures to a disproportionate size. At the same time, it is proper to state that, were this the fit place for such comparisons, they would afford lucid proof that his oratorical compositions in Latin are no tame nor

* In his Behemoth.

doubtful representations of the Eloquence which "shook the arsenal and fulmin'd over "Greece." They display the same fervid imagination invigorated by an internal sentiment of sincere conviction, that Justice was on the side which he had taken in the national quarrel.

The Conqueror of Eschines in their farfamed contest concerning the golden Crown decreed to him by the Senate, on the proposal of Ctesipho, has scarcely thrown the tomahawk of indignant invective with more desperate skill. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that they might be considered as a medium through which a Reader whose acquirements in the antient Languages have not extended beyond the Latin, might gain no very inadequate idea of the pointed interrogation, the impetuous sallies, the vollied sarcasms, by which Demosthenes struck down and crushed his Competitor for Popularity and the palm of Eloquence. Sure I am that a recent perusal of them brought out vividly in my mind passages in the Greek whose vestiges had nearly faded away. Yet how many who have hung with admiration over the volumes of the "Oratours renown'd