It is worthy of notice, that except the stoics, who, without aiming at elegance of language, argued closely and with vigour, Quintilian proscribes the remaining sects of philosophers.  Aristippus, he says, placed his summum bonum in bodily pleasure, and therefore could be no friend to the strict regimen of the accomplished orator.  Much less could Pyrrho be of use, since he doubted whether there was any such thing in existence as the judges before whom the cause must be pleaded.  To him the party accused, and the senate, were alike non-entities. Neque vero Aristippus, summum in voluptate corpora bonum ponens, ad hunc nos laborem adhortetur.  Pyrrho quidem, quas in hoc opere partes habere potest? cui judices esse apud quos verba faciat, et reum pro quo loquatur, et senatum, in quo sit dicenda sententia, non liquebat. Quintil. lib. xii. cap. 2.

Section XXXII.

[a] We are told by Quintilian, that Demosthenes, the great orator of Greece, was an assiduous hearer of Plato:  Constat Demosthenem, principem omnium Graeciae oratorum, dedisse operam Platoni. Lib. xii. cap. 2.  And Cicero expressly says, that, if he might venture to call himself an orator, he was made so, not by the manufacture of the schools of rhetoric, but in the walks of the Academy. Fateor me oratorem, si modo sim, aut etiam quicumque sim, non ex rhetorum officinis, sed ex Academiae spatiis extitisse.  Ad Brutum Orator, s. 12.

Section XXXIII.

[a] The ancient critics made a wide distinction, between a mere facility of speech, and what they called the oratorical faculty.  This is fully explained by Asinius Pollio, who said of himself, that by pleading at first with propriety, he succeeded so far as to be often called upon; by pleading frequently, he began to lose the propriety with which he set out; and the reason was, by constant practice he acquired rashness, not a just confidence in himself; a fluent facility, not the true faculty of an orator. Commode agenda factum est, ut saepe agerem; saepe agenda, ut minus commode; quia scilicet nimia facilitas magis quam facultas, nec fiducia, sed temeritas, paratur. Quintil. lib. xii.

Section XXXIV.

[a] There is in this place a trifling mistake, either in Messala, the speaker, or in the copyists.  Crassus was born A.U.C. 614.  See s. xviii. note [f].  Papirius Carbo, the person accused, was consul A.U.C. 634, and the prosecution was in the following year, when Crassus expressly says, that he was then only one and twenty. Quippe qui omnium maturrime ad publicas causas accesserim, annosque natus UNUM ET VIGINTI, nobilissimum hominem et eloquentissimum in judicium vocarim. Cicero, De Orat. lib. iii. s. 74.  Pliny the consul was another instance of early pleading.  He says himself, that he began his career in the forum at the age of nineteen, and, after long practice, he could only see the functions of an orator as it were in a mist. Undevicessimo