tion or the simplicity of the transactions to be told; and he says that the rhetoricians, who require that every narration should be short, may be answered like the baker, who asked his customer whether he should make his bread hard or soft. "Pray sir, cannot you make my bread good?"

This reasoning is obviously just.

But some

rule is as obviously necessary for curtailing superfluities of narration; nor is it impossible in prescribing brevity to indicate some criterion, by which the looseness of this general precept may be circumscribed. What is the use of the narration? It is to lay the foundation for the speaker's argument; and the end, for which it is introduced, is the best measure for marking its limits. Narration, adduced as the basis of reasoning, comprises three periods of time, and three distinct links, chained in succession together; the important facts, the causes in which they originated, and the consequences which flowed from them. The facts are composed of various incidents, the selection of which should be diversified according to the purpose, for which they are alledged. The same events are susceptible of very various narratives, all strictly conformable to the truth; and the same assemblage of circumstances, which would

1

constitute a concise narrative for the purpose of illustrating an important argument, would be tediously long if the position, which gives them pith and moment, were removed.

Take for example the narration of Milo's de-
parture from Rome, the day of the encounter,
which terminated in the death of Clodius.
"Mi-

lo," says
the orator, "had attended that day in the
senate, and after their adjournment went home,
changed his shoes and garments, waited a little, as
usual, for his wife to get ready, and finally left his
house at a time, when Clodius, had he meant to
return that day to Rome, must have been arrived.
Clodius meets him on horseback, without carriage,
without baggage, without his usual train of effem-
inate Greeks, nay without his wife, which was
almost unexampled; while this supposed assassin,
who is represented as having taken that road for
the express purpose of murder, was travelling in
his carriage, mufffed up in his cloak, encumbered
with a load of baggage, and surrounded by a deli-
cate and timorous train of women and children."

Suppose that the defence of Milo upon that trial had been like that in the case of Roscius of Ameria. Suppose the murder had been committed at Rome, and the object of Cicero had been to

show, that it was not and could not be committed by Milo, because he was, at the time of its commission, in the country. The material fact of his departure from Rome would have been precisely the same; but the narration must have been altogether different. The selection of incidents would have been varied, or omitted. The purpose being merely to show that he was not at Rome, it would have been useless and impertinent to tell of his attendance in the senate; of his change of clothing; of his wife's adjustment of cap and ribbons; of his cloak, his maid-servants, and his boys. In such a state of the cause those very incidents, which in the oration, as it now appears, are selected with such consummate address, would have been tedious and ridiculous. In that case the absence from the city would alone have been material, and the narration might have been comprised in half a line. But here the ob. ject was to exhibit Milo in a certain state of mind, for the purpose of convincing the judges, that his meeting with Clodius was on his part unpremeditated. What an admirable grouping of incidents to produce this effect! In Shakspeare's tragedy of Julius Caesar, the poet makes the principal conspirator of Caesar's death describe the state of

mind, which in the human constitution precedes the commission of such unnatural deeds.

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection."

Cicero does not precisely say this; but the whole tenor of his narration is founded upon the presumption, that the judges would feel what extreme agitation of deportment, and what a fearful conflict of the passions accompanies in the human breast the premeditation of murder. Milo was a senator. He had on the same day, when Clodius was killed, attended the meeting of the senate, and had not left that assembly until after their adjournment. To a superficial observer of human nature it were perhaps impossible to select an incident less entitled to notice in a narrative than this. Why, no doubt Milo, like the other senators, habitually attended the meetings of the senate, and waited for the adjournment to go home. True; but this regular recurrence to his ordinary daily occupation has a tendency to show, that he was not in the con

vulsive agitations of a laboring crime.

The set

tled intent of murder would have produced a deviation from the common round of business. He would not have attended at the senate at all; or he would have left the assembly before its adjournment, had the bloody purpose been teeming in his soul. A A purpose of murder would have absorbed all his faculties. He could not have enjoyed the composure of spirit, nor the coolness of recollection to go home and change his clothes, and wait for the lingering arrangements of a lady's dress, Still less would he have thought of taking her with her chambermaids and boys in his retinue. This is the argument, which Cicero intends to raise from the facts, thus recapitulated; and the bare notice of circumstances, thus trifling in themselves, prepares the minds of the judges for the reception of his defence. By turning to the subsequent argumentative part of the same oration, you will see with what earnestness and force he dwells upon these incidents seemingly so slight, as affording the clearest demonstration of Milo's in

nocence.

To comply then with the requisition, that the narration should be short, it will be sufficient to remember that you must begin precisely with that