materia est. Lib. x. cap. 2.  Petronius has given a lively description of the rhetoricians of his time.  The consequence, he says, of their turgid style, and the pompous swell of sounding periods, has ever been the same:  when their scholars enter the forum, they look as if they were transported into a new world.  The teachers of rhetoric have been the bane of all true eloquence. Haec ipsa tolerabilia essent, si ad eloquentiam ituris viam facerent:  nunc et rerum tumore, et sententiarum vanissimo strepitu, hoc tantum proficiunt, ut quum in forum venerint, putent se in alium terrarum orbem delatos.  Pace vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. Petron. in Satyrico, cap. 1 and 2.  That gay writer, who passed his days in luxury and voluptuous pleasures (see his character, Annals, b. xvi. s. 18), was, amidst all his dissipation, a man of learning, and, at intervals, of deep reflection.  He knew the value of true philosophy, and, therefore, directs the young orator to the Socratic school, and to that plan of education which we have before us in the present Dialogue.  He bids his scholar begin with Homer, and there drink deep of the Pierian spring:  after that, he recommends the moral system; and, when his mind is thus enlarged, he allows him to wield the arms of Demosthenes.

                  ——­Det primos versibus annos,
     Maeoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem: 
     Mox et Socratico plenus grege mutet habenas
     Liber, et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma.

[b] Cicero has left a book, entitled TOPICA, in which he treats at large of the method of finding proper arguments.  This, he observes, was executed by Aristotle, whom he pronounces the great master both of invention and judgement. Cum omnis ratio diligens disserendi duas habeat partes; unam INVENIENDI, alteram JUDICANDI; utriusque princeps, ut mihi quidem videtur, Aristoteles fuit. Ciceronis Topica, s. vi.  The sources from which arguments may be drawn, are called LOCI COMMUNES, COMMON PLACES.  To supply the orator with ample materials, and to render him copious on every subject, was the design of the Greek preceptor, and for that purpose he gave his TOPICA. Aristoteles adolescentes, non ad philosophorum morem tenuiter disserendi, sed ad copiam rhetorum in utramque partem, ut ornatius et uberius dici posset, exercuit; idemque locos (sic enim appellat) quasi argumentorum notas tradidit, unde omnis in utramque partem traheretur oratio. Cicero, De Oratore.  Aristotle was the most eminent of Plato’s scholars:  he retired to a gymnasium, or place of exercise, in the neighbourhood of Athens, called the Lyceum, where, from a custom, which he and his followers observed, of discussing points of philosophy, as they walked in the porticos of the place, they obtained the name of Peripatetics, or the walking philosophers.  See Middleton’s Life of Cicero, vol. ii. p. 537, 4to edit.