Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/37

 the boy is able to retort on him for inconsistency in calling Ovidius Ovid, and not calling Tacitus Tacit; through all his explanations of what Irony is and is not; through his pedantic "by the ways;" his definitions (pace Professor Freeman) of Ancient and Modern History; his sarcasms and his descriptions: down to the time when his advice is about quadrille tables and ministers and kings, the series is absolutely unbroken and of unflagging interest.

They are at the best, as he says himself, "what one man of the world writes to another." "I am not writing poetry," he says, "but useful reflections." "Surely it is of great use to a young man before he starts out for a country full of mazes, windings and turnings, to have at least a good map of it by some experienced traveller." And so the old man gives us his map of life as he had seen it. It is exactly the same estimate in result as Cicero gave in the De Oratore: "Men judge most things under the influence of either hate, or love, or desire, or anger, or grief, or joy, or hope, or fear, or error, or some other passion, than by truth, or precepts, or standard of right, or justice, or law."

and if we disapprove of the morality of Cicero and his epoch no less than of Chesterfield's, we must yet