"When the professors therefore, abovementioned were in the decline of life, Isocrates made his appearance, whos house stood open to all Greece as the _School of Eloquence_. He was an accomplished orator, and an excellent teacher; though he did not display his talents in the Forum, but cherished and improved that glory within the walls of his academy, which, in my opinion, no poet has ever yet acquired. He composed many valuable specimens of his art, and taught the principles of it to others; and not only excelled his predecessors in every part of it, but first discovered that a certain _metre_ should be observed in prose, though totally different from the measured rhyme of the poets. Before _him_, the artificial structure and harmony of language was unknown;--or if there are any traces of it to be discovered, they appear to have been made without design; which, perhaps, will be thought a beauty:--but whatever it may be deemed, it was, in the present case, the effect rather of native genius, or of accident, than of art and observation. For mere nature itself will measure and limit our sentences by a convenient compass of words; and when they are thus confined to a moderate flow of expression, they will frequently have a _numerous_ cadence:--for the ear alone can decide what is full and complete, and what is deficient; and the course of our language will necessarily be regulated by our breath, in which it is excessively disagreeable, not only to fail, but even to labour. "After Isocrates came Lysias, who, though not personally engaged in forensic causes, was a very artful and an elegant composer, and such a one as you might almost venture to pronounce a complete orator: for Demosthenes is the man who approaches the character so nearly, that you may apply it to him without hesitation. No keen, no artful turns could have been contrived for the pleadings he has left behind him, which he did not readily discover;--nothing could have been expressed with greater nicety, or more clearly and poignantly, than it has been already expressed by him;--and nothing greater, nothing more rapid and forcible, nothing adorned with a nobler elevation either of language, or sentiment, can be conceived than what is to be found in his orations. He was soon rivalled by his cotemporaries Hyperides, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Dinarchus, and Demades (none of whose writings are extant) with many others that might be mentioned: for this age was adorned with a profusion of good orators; and the genuine strength and vigour of Eloquence appears to me to have subsisted to the end of this period, which was distinguished by a natural beauty of composition without disguise or affectation.