Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/146

 have attributed them to Lucian: but, I think, he must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original: such diversity of passions upon such variety of actions, and passages of life and government; such freedom of thought; such boldness of expression; such bounty to his friends; such scorn of his enemies; such honour of learned men; such esteem of good; such knowledge of life; such contempt of death; with such fierceness of nature, and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them, and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting, what Phalaris did. In all one writ you find the scholar or the sophist, and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander.

The next to these in time are Herodotus, Thucydides, Hippocrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle; of whom I shall say no more than what I think is allowed by all: that they are in their several kinds inimitable. So are Cæsar, Sallust, and Cicero, in theirs, who are the ancientest of the Latin (I speak still of prose) unless it be some little of old Cato upon Rustic Affairs.