Neither did John always observe that scrupulous accuracy which is so dear to the heart of a certain class of critic, that, like a true altruist, he would have every one, except himself, possess it. At the opening he writes “Themistocles” for “Miltiades.” But his erudition is considerable, and his qualities in other respects not contemptible. It is, however, very noticeable that he is as much inclined to the general and disinclined from the particular as if he had lived fifteen hundred years earlier. Although he is no slavish Platonist (he has somewhere the happy phrase Πλάτων Πλάτωνος ἀναξίως. “Did Plato? the less Plato he”), he is fully Platonic in his scorn of the μερικαὶ ἰδέαι, of the mere “characterising” speeches, Lysiac and Isocratean, and so forth, and aims at the “circumprehensive and comprehensive” idea and phrase which transcends all these. Thus we are once more face to face with that putting of the cart before the horse which has met us so often—with that discussion of δεινότης and γλυκύτης which is no doubt a capital thing in its way, but which ought to be preluded and, as military men say, “prepared” by a long, by an almost infinite, examination of the individual exponents and practitioners of the Vigorous and the Sweet. It is, of course, fair to remember that he is annotating Hermogenes, and that he can hardly be expected to follow methods different from those of his text. But it necessarily follows that his loyalty leads him away from the fields most likely to be fertile for us, and, when he does approach them, directs him mainly to the Orators, and to them chiefly, if not wholly, from the strictly rhetorical point of view. Yet he is by no means ill to read, though a little technical and abstract, on rhythm (opening of Bk. i. chap. i.); and if he has gone no further in reference to φαντασία than all before him except Philostratus, that is no great reproach to him. Undoubtedly, however, his chief—as at the same time his most tantalising—attraction is his reference to things which, in his comparatively modern period, must have still existed, but which seem now to be irrecoverably lost. Such is his quotation, p. 93, of certain remarks of Longinus on the poet Menelaus.[272] We may doubt whether definite poetical criticism from the excellent John would have been satisfactory, when we find him assigning “out-and-out”[273] poetical quality to the soft inanity of Isocrates, and the want of it to the rough fire of Thucydides. Yet in the lower and “composition-book” kind of criticism he is not to seek—the synopsis of clearness at p. 173 being a very workmanlike composition.[274] Footnote 272: Apparently this poet, “by taking pains, changed an unhappily gifted nature into exactness and blamelessness.” Footnote 273: ἄντικρυς. Footnote 274: