vered a large tract of
ground with magnificent porticos, and lined the banks of the river
with elegant statues; profuse, with all his avarice, and, in the depth
of infamy, proud and vain-glorious. _Convenitur ad eum mira
celebritate: cuncti detestantur, oderunt; et, quasi probent, quasi
diligant, cursant, frequentant, utque breviter, quod sentio, enunciem,
in Regulo demerendo, Regulum imitantur. Tenet se trans Tyberim in
hortis, in quibus latissimum solum porticibus immensis, ripam statuis
suis occupavit; ut est, in summa avaritia sumptuosus, in summa
infamia gloriosus._ Lib. iv. ep. 2. All this splendour, in which
Regulus lived, was the fruit of a gainful and blood-thirsty eloquence;
if that may be called eloquence, which Pliny says was nothing more
than a crazed imagination; _nihil praeter ingenium insanum_. Lib. iv.
ep. 7.

[c] Orpheus, in poetic story, was the son of Calliope, and Linus
boasted of Apollo for his father.

----Nec Thracius Orpheus,
Nec Linus; huic mater quamvis, atque huic pater adsit,
Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo.
VIRG. ECL. iv. ver. 55.

Not Orpheus' self, nor Linus, should exceed
My lofty lays, or gain the poet's meed,
Though Phoebus, though Calliope inspire,
And one the mother aid, and one the sire.
WHARTON'S VIRGIL.

Orpheus embarked in the Argonautic expedition. His history of it,
together with his hymns, is still extant; but whether genuine, is much
doubted.

[d] Lysias, the celebrated orator, was a native of Syracuse, the
chief town in Sicily. He lived about four hundred years before the
Christian aera. Cicero says, that he did not addict himself to the
practice of the bar; but his compositions were so judicious, so pure
and elegant, that you might venture to pronounce him a perfect orator.
_Tum fuit Lysias, ipse quidem in causis forensibus non versatus sed
egregie subtilis scriptor, atque elegans, quem jam prope audeas
oratorem perfectum dicere._ Cicero _De Claris Orat._ s. 35. Quintilian
gives the same opinion. Lysias, he says, preceded Demosthenes: he is
acute and elegant, and if to teach the art of speaking were the only
business of an orator, nothing more perfect can be found. He has no
redundancy, nothing superfluous, nothing too refined, or foreign to
his purpose: his style is flowing, but more like a pure fountain, than
a noble river. _His aetate Lysias major,