And hills, where vines their purple harvest yield,
Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crown'd,
Our feasts enhanc'd with music's sprightly sound;
Why on those shores are we with joy survey'd,
Admir'd as heroes, and as gods obey'd,

Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous powers above?
'Tis ours the dignity they give to grace;
The first in valor, as the first in place.

It

The diction is on a level with the doctrine. was thus that the son of Jupiter ought to think, to speak, and to act.

It would have been easy to select from oratorical compositions a multitude of examples of these rhetorical modes of ratiocination; for when reasoning is employed in poetry it adopts all the forms, and is allowed all the privileges of rhetoric. In the performances of orators one of the most ordinary modes of ratiocination is to state by itself the major proposition of the syllogism, as an argument to support at once the minor proposition and the conclusion. This is the source of all those general observations on life and manners, which in the works of the most excellent orators become maxims of morality and wisdom. serve the argument of Julius Caesar, in Sallust, on

Ob

the question concerning the punishment to be inflicted upon the accomplices of Catiline. His object is to recommend moderation. And he urges it by insisting upon its necessity in all important deliberations. "It is," says he, "the duty of all men, who are in consultation upon critical questions, to be alike free from friendship and hatred, from anger and compassion." Then from this

general duty upon all men he deduces the particular duty, which he is desirous of enforcing specially upon his hearers; and from that rule of moderation he derives his vote, that the lives of the conspirators should be spared.

In my next lecture I shall call to your notice examples of this kind of reasoning, from orators greater than Sallust or Caesar. We are now en

gaged upon that very part of our subject, in which Quinctilian tells us that the deepest and most hidden mysteries of the art lie concealed. To reveal them all at once would be putting to a trial too severe, not your capacities, but your patience. We are traveling in paths, where the rugged and the barren region must occasionally succeed to that of pleasantness, and where the prospect of the fruit must sometimes reconcile us to the absence

of the flower. Though entangled in the labyrinths of logic, we have not lost our clue. Let us here indulge ourselves with a pause of rest, with the hope that our next effort will open for us the issue to a fairer, or at least a less perplexing field.

LECTURE XXI.

RATIOCINATION. INDUCTION.

IN my last lecture I was attempting to explain to you the manner, in which the art of logic and its forms of reasoning are applied with elegance and effect to the purposes of oratory. You have

all lived long enough in the world to know, that usefulness and pleasure have some natural prepossessions against each other, which are not always easily removed; but which must be removed before they can form that intimate and inseparable alliance, on which the strength and permanency of their worth alone depend. The argumentative part of a discourse is its living soul. It is to true eloquence what charity is to true christianity. Without it, though you should speak with the

VOL. II.

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