"But I made some remarks," said Atticus, "which I had several times a mind to mention; only I was loath to interrupt you. As your discourse, however, seems to be drawing towards an end, I think I may venture to out with them."--"By all means," replied I.--"I readily grant, then," said he, "that there is something very humourous and elegant in that continued _Irony_, which Socrates employs to so much advantage in the dialogues of Plato, Xenophon, and Aeschines. For when a dispute commences on the nature of wisdom, he professes, with a great deal of humour and ingenuity, to have no pretensions to it himself; while, with a kind of concealed raillery, he ascribes the highest degree of it to those who had the arrogance to lay an open claim to it. Thus, in Plato, he extols Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Gorgias, and several others, to the skies: but represents himself as a mere ignorant. This in _him_ was peculiarly becoming; nor can I agree with Epicurus, who thinks it censurable. But in a professed History, (for such, in fact, is the account you have been giving us of the Roman Orators) I shall leave you to judge, whether an application of the _Irony_ is not equally reprehensible, as it would be in giving a judicial evidence."--"Pray, what are you driving at," said I,-- "for I cannot comprehend you."--"I mean," replied he, "in the first place, that the commendations which you have bestowed upon some of our Orators, have a tendency to mislead the opinion of those who are unacquainted with their true characters. There were likewise several parts of your account, at which I could scarcely forbear laughing: as, for instance, when you compared old Cato to Lysias. He was, indeed, a great, and a very extraordinary man. Nobody, I believe, will say to the contrary. But shall we call him an Orator? Shall we pronounce him the rival of Lysias, who was the most finished character of the kind? If we mean to jest, this comparison of your's would form a pretty _Irony_: but if we are talking in real earnest, we should pay the same scrupulous regard to truth, as if we were giving evidence upon oath. As a Citizen, a Senator, a General, and, in short, a man who was distinguished by his prudence, his activity, and every other virtue, your favourite Cato has my highest approbation. I can likewise applaud his speeches, considering the time he lived in. They exhibit the out-lines of a great genius; but such, however, as are evidently rude and imperfect. In the same manner, when you represented his _Antiquities_ as replete with all the graces of Oratory, and compared Cato with Philistus and Thucydides, did you really imagine, that you could persuade me and Brutus to believe you? or would you seriously degrade those, whom none of the Greeks themselves have been able to equal, into a comparison with a stiff country, gentleman, who scarcely suspected that there was any such thing in being, as a copious and ornamental style? You