No mistake could well be greater than that the old _captatores_ “expended their strength on the _disjecta membra_ of language,” or “gorged themselves with the garbage of phrases, chopped, dislocated, and torn asunder, by themselves.” On the contrary, they were “gentle as a sucking dove.” The accompanying words descriptive of the “_captator_” were not _torve_, _ringi_, and so forth; but _collide_, _blande_, or _blandicule_. There was nothing like the harpy about them, as Mr. Webster seems to suppose, in this remarkable description of his, which is as rhetorically unsavory as it is classically untrue. So far from there being any “set” of critics, in classic times, denominated and known as _captatores verborum_, I doubt whether even the abstract noun “_captatio_” occurs half a dozen times, in all the classics, in connection with the genitive of his pretended appellation. He could hardly have made a greater or more ludicrous mistake. It is exceedingly to be regretted, after the numerous instances we have lately had of Mr. Webster’s bad logic, and bad humanity, and bad discoveries of natural law, that he should now offend the classical taste of the country, and bring discredit upon the New England colleges, by his bad Latin. This whole anti-classical paragraph about “_disjecta membra_,” and “chopping,” and “gorging,” and “uncleanness,” is an unclean conception of his own; not a pure but an impure invention, and seems more epigastric than intellectual in its origin.[12] 3. I will now give a specimen or two of Mr. Webster’s errors in geography, and of his false citation of authorities. It will then be seen that his geographical statements are worthy to be placed side by side with his classical. In the same letter, he says the extent of New Mexico, north and south, on the line of the Rio Grande, “can hardly be less than a thousand miles.” This makes a little more than _fourteen_ degrees of latitude. Now, as its northern boundary is in 42°, its southern must be as low as 28°. This is _four_ degrees below El Paso del Norte. Yet Mr. Webster, on the 13th of June last, declared himself in favor of fixing the northern boundary of Texas at or near El Paso, and more than four degrees of latitude north of what he here says is the southern boundary of New Mexico. He also supported that part of the compromise bill which proposes to give Texas, not only these four degrees of latitude, but millions of money also, for taking what, as he now says, belongs to New Mexico and the United States. How can these views stand together?