On the other hand, there are men neat, acute, explaining everything, and making matters clearer, not nobler, polished up with a certain subtle and compressed style of oratory; and in the same class there are others, shrewd, but unpolished, and designedly resembling rough and unskilful speakers; and some who, with the same barrenness and simplicity, are still more elegant, that is to say, are facetious, flowery, and even slightly embellished.

But there is another class, half-way between these two, and as it were compounded of both of them, endowed neither with the acuteness of the last-mentioned orators, nor with the thunder of the former; as a sort of mixture of both, excelling in neither style; partaking of both, or rather indeed (if we would adhere to the exact truth) destitute of all the qualifications of either.  Those men go on, as they say, in one uniform tenor of speaking, bringing nothing except their facility and equalness of language; or else they add something, like reliefs on a pedestal, and so they embellish their whole oration, with trifling ornaments of words and ideas.

VII.  Now, whoever have by themselves arrived at any power in each of these styles of oratory, have gained a great name among orators; but we must inquire whether they have sufficiently effected what we want.  For we see that there have been some men who have been ornate and dignified speakers, being at the same time shrewd and subtle arguers.  And I wish that we were able to find a model of such an orator among the Latins.  It would be a fine thing not to be forced to have recourse to foreign instances, but to be content with those of our own country.  But though in that discourse of mine which I have published in the Brutus, I have attributed much credit to the Latins,—­partly to encourage others, and partly out of affection for my own countrymen,—­I still recollect that I by far prefer Demosthenes to all other men, inasmuch as he adapted his energy to that eloquence which I myself feel to be such, and not to that which I have ever had any experience of in any actual instance.  He was an orator than whom there has never existed one more dignified, nor more wise, nor more temperate.  And therefore it is well that we should warn those men whose ignorant conversation is getting to have some notoriety and weight, who wish either to be called Attic speakers, or who really wish to speak in the Attic style, to fix their admiration on this man above all others, than whom I do not think Athens itself more Attic.  For by so doing they may learn what Attic means, and may measure eloquence by his power and not by their own weakness; for at present every one praises just that which he thinks that he himself is able to imitate.  But still I think it not foreign to my present subject to remind those who are endowed with but a weak judgment, what is the peculiar merit of the Attic writers.