[Footnote:  Ineffectual fastidiousness.] And I know not well how to excuse him, in that he deemed his Poesie worthy to be published.  It is no great imperfection to make bad verses, but it is an imperfection in him that he never perceived how unworthy they were of the glorie of his name.  Concerning his eloquence, it is beyond all comparison, and I verily beleeve that none shall ever equall it.  Cicero the younger, who resembled his father in nothing but in name, commanding in Asia, chanced one day to have many strangers at his board, and amongst others, one Caestius sitting at the lower end, as the manner is to thrust in at great mens tables:  Cicero inquired of one of his men what he was, who told him his name, but he dreaming on other matters, and having forgotten what answere his man made him, asked him his name twice or thrice more:  the servant, because he would not be troubled to tell him one thing so often, and by some circumstance to make him to know him better, “It is,” said he, “the same Caestius of whom some have told you that, in respect of his owne, maketh no accompt of your fathers eloquence:”  Cicero being suddainly mooved, commanded the said poore Caestius to be presently taken from the table, and well whipt in his presence:  Lo heere an uncivill and barbarous host.  Even amongst those which (all things considered) have deemed his eloquence matchlesse and incomparable, others there have been who have not spared to note some faults in it.  As great Brutus said, that it was an eloquence broken, halting, and disjoynted, fractam et elumbem:  “Incoherent and sinnowlesse.”  Those Orators that lived about his age, reproved also in him the curious care he had of a certaine long cadence at the end of his clauses, and noted these words, esse videatur, which he so often useth.  As for me, I rather like a cadence that falleth shorter, cut like Iambikes:  yet doth he sometimes confounde his numbers, [Footnote:  Confuse his rhythm.] but it is seldome:  I have especially observed this one place:  “Ego vero me minus diu senem esse mallem, quam esse senem, antequam essem? [Footnote:  Cic.  De Senect.] “But I had rather not be an old man, so long as I might be, than to be old before I should be.”  Historians are my right hand, for they are pleasant and easie; and therewithall the man with whom I desire generally to be acquainted may more lively and perfectly be discovered in them than in any other composition:  the varictic and truth of his inward conditions, in grosse and by retale:  the diversitie of the meanes of his collection and composing, and of the accidents that threaten him.  Now those that write of mens lives, forasmuch as they ammuse and busie themselves more about counsels than events, more about that which commeth from within than that which appeareth outward; they are fittest for me:  And that’s the reason why Plutarke above all in that kind doth best please me.  Indeed I am not a little grieved that we have not a dozen of Laertius, or that he is not