depth and richness to narrow and confined premises by ingenuity and skill in the disposition of his trees and walks. Terence and Lucretius had cultivated simplicity; Cotta, Brutus, and Calvus had attempted strength; but Cicero rather made a language than a style; yet not so much by the invention as by the combination of words. Some terms, indeed, his philosophical subjects obliged him to coin;[257] but his great art lies in the application of existing materials, in converting the very disadvantages of the language into beauties,[258] in enriching it with circumlocutions and metaphors, in pruning it of harsh and uncouth expressions, in systematizing the structure of a sentence.[259] This is that _copia dicendi_ which gained Cicero the high testimony of Caesar to his inventive powers,[260] and which, we may add, constitutes him the greatest master of composition that the world has seen. 13. Such, then, are the principal characteristics of Cicero's oratory; on a review of which we may, with some reason, conclude that Roman eloquence stands scarcely less indebted to his works than Roman philosophy. For, though in his _De claris Oratoribus_ he begins his review from the age of Junius Brutus, yet, soberly speaking (and as he seems to allow in the opening of the _De Oratore_), we cannot assign an earlier date to the rise of eloquence among his countrymen, than that of the same Athenian embassy which introduced the study of philosophy. To aim, indeed, at persuasion, by appeals to the reason or passions, is so natural, that no country, whether refined or barbarous, is without its orators. If, however, eloquence be the mere power of persuading, it is but a relative term, limited to time and place, connected with a particular audience, and leaving to posterity no test of its merits but the report of those whom it has been successful in influencing; but we are speaking of it as the subject-matter of an art.[261]