learning, had a taste for the liberal Sciences, spoke the Roman language with accuracy, was well acquainted with the laws and constitution of his country, and had a tolerable share of wit; but he was not a Speaker of any great application, or extensive practice; and as he happened to live in the intermediate time between the appearance of Sulpicius and Hortensius, he was unable to equal the former, and forced to yield to the superior talents of the latter. We may easily form a judgment of his abilities from the historical Works he has left behind him; which, though evidently preferable to any thing of the kind which had appeared before, may serve as a proof that he was far below the standard of perfection, and that this species of composition had not then been improved to any great degree of excellence among the Romans. But the genius of Q. Hortensius, even in his early youth, like one of Phidias's statues, was no sooner beheld than it was universally admired! He spoke his first Oration in the Forum in the consulship of L. Crassus and Q. Scaevola, to whom it was personally adressed; and though he was then only nineteen years old, he descended from the Rostra with the hearty approbation not only of the audience in general, but of the two Consuls themselves, who were the most intelligent judges in the whole city. He died in the consulship of L. Paulus and C. Marcellus; from which it appears that he was four-and-forty years a Pleader. We shall review his character more at large in the sequel: but in this part of my history, I chose to include him in the number of Orators who were rather of an earlier date. This indeed must necessarily happen to all whose lives are of any considerable length: for they are equally liable to a comparison with their Elders and their Juniors; as in the case of the poet Attius, who says that both he and Pacuvius applied themselves to the cultivation of the drama under the fame Aediles; though, at the time, the one was eighty, and the other only thirty years old. Thus Hortensius may be paralleled not only with those who were properly his contemporaries, but with me, and you, my Brutus, and with others of a prior date. For he began to speak in public while Crassus was living but his fame increased when he appeared as a joint advocate with Antonius and Philip (at that time in the decline of life) in defence of Cn. Pompeius,-- a cause in which (though a mere youth) he distinguished himself above the rest. He may therefore be included in the lift of those whom I have placed in the time of Sulpicius; but among his proper coevals, such as M. Piso, M. Crassus, Cn. Lentulus, and P. Lentulus Sura, he excelled beyond the reach of competition; and after these he happened upon me, in the early part of my life (for I was eight years younger than himself) and spent a number of years with me in pursuit of the same forensic glory: and at last, (a little before his death) he once pleaded with _you_, in defence