[b] Enough, perhaps, has been already said in the notes, concerning the teachers of rhetoric; but it will not be useless to cite one passage more from Petronius, who in literature, as well as convivial pleasure, may be allowed to be arbiter elegantiarum.  The rhetoricians, he says, came originally from Asia; they were, however, neither known to Pindar, and the nine lyric poets, nor to Plato, or Demosthenes.  They arrived at Athens in evil hour, and imported with them that enormous frothy loquacity, which at once, like a pestilence, blasted all the powers of genius, and established the rules of corrupt eloquence. Nondum umbraticus doctor ingenia deleverat, cum Pindarus novemque lyrici Homericis versibus canere non timuerunt.  Certe neque Platona, neque Demosthenem, ad hoc genus exercitationis accessisse video.  Nuper ventosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit, animosque juvenum ad magna surgentes veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit; simulque corruptae eloquentiae regula stetit et obtinuit. Petron. Satyricon, s. 2.

Section 5.

[a] When the public taste was vitiated, and to elevate and surprise, as Bayes says, was the new way of writing, Seneca is, with good reason, ranked in the class of ingenious, but affected authors.  Menage says, if all the books in the world were in the fire, there is not one, whom he would so eagerly snatch from the flames as Plutarch.  That author never tires him; he reads him often, and always finds new beauties.  He cannot say the same of Seneca; not but there are admirable passages in his works, but when brought to the test they lose their apparent beauty by a close examination.  Seneca serves to be quoted in the warmth of conversation, but is not of equal value in the closet.  Whatever be the subject, he wishes to shine, and, by consequence, his thoughts are too refined, and often false.  Menagiana, tom. ii. p. 1.

Section 6.

[a] This charge against Seneca is by no means new.  Quintilian was his contemporary; he saw and heard the man, and, in less than twenty years after his death, pronounced judgement against him.  In the conclusion of the first chapter of his tenth book, after having given an account of the Greek and Roman authors, he says, he reserved Seneca for the last place, because, having always endeavoured to counteract the influence of a bad taste, he was supposed to be influenced by motives of personal enmity.  But the case was otherwise.  He saw that Seneca was the favourite of the times, and, to check the torrent that threatened the ruin of all true eloquence, he exerted his best efforts to diffuse a sounder judgement.  He did not wish that Seneca should be laid aside:  but he could not in silence see him preferred to the writers of the Augustan age, whom that writer endeavoured to depreciate, conscious that, having chosen a different style, he could not hope to please the taste of those who were charmed with the authors of a former day.