dly cherished through ages of slavery and shame. The literature
of Rome herself was regarded with contempt by those who had fled before
her arms, and who bowed beneath her fasces. Voltaire says, in one of his
six thousand pamphlets, that he was the first person who told the French
that England had produced eminent men besides the Duke of Marlborough.
Down to a very late period, the Greeks seem to have stood in need of
similar information with respect to their masters. With Paulus Aemilius,
Sylla, and Caesar, they were well acquainted. But the notions which
they entertained respecting Cicero and Virgil were, probably, not unlike
those which Boileau may have formed about Shakspeare. Dionysius lived
in the most splendid age of Latin poetry and eloquence. He was a
critic, and, after the manner of his age, an able critic. He studied
the language of Rome, associated with its learned men, and compiled its
history. Yet he seems to have thought its literature valuable only for
the purpose of illustrating its antiquities. His reading appears to have
been confined to its public records, and to a few old annalists. Once,
and but once, if we remember rightly, he quotes Ennius, to solve a
question of etymology. He has written much on the art of oratory: yet he
has not mentioned the name of Cicero.

The Romans submitted to the pretensions of a race which they despised.
Their epic poet, while he claimed for them pre-eminence in the arts of
government and war, acknowledged their inferiority in taste, eloquence,
and science. Men of letters affected to understand the Greek language
better than their own. Pomponius preferred the honour of becoming an
Athenian, by intellectual naturalisation, to all the distinctions which
were to be acquired in the political contests of Rome. His great
friend composed Greek poems and memoirs. It is well-known that Petrarch
considered that beautiful language in which his sonnets are written,
as a barbarous jargon, and intrusted his fame to those wretched Latin
hexameters which, during the last four centuries, have scarcely found
four readers. Many eminent Romans appear to have felt the same contempt
for their native tongue as compared with the Greek. The prejudice
continued to a very late period. Julian was as partial to the Greek
language as Frederic the Great to the French: and it seems that he could
not express himself with elegance in the dialect of the state which he
ruled.

Even those Latin writers wh