nes. Let him
speak for himself.

"In earliest youth Demosthenes earned an opprobrious nickname by
the effeminacy of his dress and manner." Does Mr Mitford know that
Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a
perfectly different manner? (See the speech of Aeschines against
Timarchus.) And, if he knew it, should he not have stated it? He
proceeds thus: "On emerging from minority, by the Athenian law, at
five-and-twenty, he earned another opprobrious nickname by a prosecution
of his guardians, which was considered as a dishonourable attempt
to extort money from them." In the first place Demosthenes was not
five-and-twenty years of age. Mr Mitford might have learned, from so
common a book as the Archaeologia of Archbishop Potter, that at twenty
Athenian citizens were freed from the control of their guardians, and
began to manage their own property. The very speech of Demosthenes
against his guardians proves most satisfactorily that he was under
twenty. In his speech against Midias, he says that when he undertook
that prosecution he was quite a boy. (Meirakullion on komide.) His youth
might, therefore, excuse the step, even if it had been considered, as
Mr Mitford says, a dishonourable attempt to extort money. But who
considered it as such? Not the judges who condemned the guardians. The
Athenian courts of justice were not the purest in the world; but their
decisions were at least as likely to be just as the abuse of a deadly
enemy. Mr Mitford refers for confirmation of his statement to Aeschines
and Plutarch. Aeschines by no means bears him out; and Plutarch directly
contradicts him. "Not long after," says Mr Mitford, "he took blows
publicly in the theater" (I preserve the orthography, if it can be
so called, of this historian) "from a petulant youth of rank, named
Meidias." Here are two disgraceful mistakes. In the first place, it was
long after; eight years at the very least, probably much more. In the
next place the petulant youth, of whom Mr Mitford speaks, was fifty
years old. (Whoever will read the speech of Demosthenes against Midias
will find the statements in the text confirmed, and will have, moreover,
the pleasure of becoming acquainted with one of the finest compositions
in the world.) Really Mr Mitford has less reason to censure the
carelessness of his predecessors than to reform his own. After this
monstrous inaccuracy, with regard to facts, we may be able to judge what
degree of credit o