He begins the “Demosthenes” with an excuse for his small knowledge of Latin, and makes this a pretext for deliberately excluding all literary and even all oratorical comparison [Sidenote: _The_ Lives _quite barren for us_.] of the two. Nay, he goes further, and actually upbraids Cæcilius (apparently the same person whose treatment of the Sublime Longinus did not like) with having made this. After such a refusal it is surely idle to contend for any real or strong literary and critical _nisus_ in the agreeable moralist and biographer of Chæronea. Had there been any such tendency in him, he simply could not have avoided such a palmary occasion of giving it course. Even if he really considered himself incompetent to deliver an opinion of Cicero, he would have had something to say about Demosthenes even if this declared incompetence was only a disguise for the reluctance to treat Latin literature seriously, which is so noticeable in Greeks, this would not invalidate the reasoning. Let us, however, for the sake of the argument, and out of pure generosity, accept his excuse, put the _Lives_ out of the question, and turn to the _Moralia_.[194] As has been [Sidenote: _The_ Moralia _at first sight promising_.] said above, if we do not find literary criticism, and good literary criticism, in such a collection of a man’s work, it must be either because he has no taste for it, or because he has the taste without the faculty. For the collection is very large, and it is almost absolutely miscellaneous: the mere title _Moralia_ is nothing more than an unauthorised ticket, and has really nothing to do with the contents. Neither Montaigne nor De Quincey takes a more absolute liberty of speaking on any subject that happens to strike his fancy than Plutarch. And it cannot be said that at least some of his subjects are without direct connection with criticism. The two opening papers, “On the Education of Children” and "How a young man should read [“listen to,” literally, but this means what we mean by "read"] the Poets," would seem, the one almost necessarily (considering the humanism of ancient education), and the other inevitably, to lead to the subject. The next on “Hearing” (_i.e._, “Reading”) generally, might even seem to strengthen the necessity. Many of the [Sidenote: _Examination of this promise._] other titles are promising, and, both in the nature of the case and from what we know of the general course of ancient table-talk, the bulky volume of _Symposiac Questions_ might seem likely to be most prolific, while it is actually not infertile in matter of our kind. Let us examine what is the performance of these promises. Footnote 194: I use the Teubner edition by Hercher and Bernardakis, 5 vols., Leipsic (1872-1893).