severe a critic on himself, he polished too much, and grew weak by refinement.  But his manner was grave and solid; his style was chaste, and often animated.  To be thought a man of attic eloquence was the height of his ambition.  If he had lived to see his error, and to give to his eloquence a true and perfect form, not by retrenching (for there was nothing to be taken away), but by adding certain qualities that were wanted, he would have reached the summit of his art.  By a premature death his fame was nipped in the bud. Inveni qui Calvum praeferrent omnibus; inveni qui contra crederent eum, nimia contra se calumnia, verum sanguinem perdidisse.  Sed est et sancta et gravis oratio, et castigata, et frequenter vehemens quoque.  Imitator est autem Atticorum; fecitque illi properata mors injuriam, si quid adjecturus, non si quid detracturus fuit. Quintil. lib. x. cap. 1.

[d] This was the famous Marcus Junius Brutus, who stood forth in the cause of liberty, and delivered his country from the usurpation of Julius Caesar.  Cicero describes him in that great tragic scene, brandishing his bloody dagger, and calling on Cicero by name, to tell him that his country was free. Caesare interfecto, statim cruentum alte extollens Marcus Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit, atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus. Philippic, ii. s. 28.  The late Doctor Akenside has retouched this passage with all the colours of a sublime imagination.

     Look then abroad through nature, through the range
     Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
     Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,
     And speak, O man! does this capacious scene
     With half that kindling majesty dilate
     Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
     Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar’s fate,
     Amid the crowd of patriots, and his arm
     Aloft extending, like eternal Jove
     When guilt brings down the thunder, call’d aloud
     On Tully’s name, and shook his crimson steel,
     And bade the Father of his Country hail! 
     For, lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
     And Rome again is free. 
                     PLEASURES OF IMAG. b. i. ver. 487.

According to Quintilian, Brutus was fitter for philosophical speculations, and books of moral theory, than for the career of public oratory.  In the former he was equal to the weight and dignity of his subject:  you clearly saw that he believed what he said. Egregius vero multoque quam in orationibus praestantior Brutus, suffecit ponderi rerum; scias eum sentire quae dicit. Quintil. lib. x. cap. 1.

For Asinius Pollio and Messala, see section xii. note [e].