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DE QUINCE Y 241
of Radicalism, that with their base, fawning
flatteries of
the people they mixed up the venom of vipers against their
opponents and against the aristocracy of the land.
*Y iroy \vKawtiv p^/uxmot?
" subtly to wheedle the people with honeyed
words dressed
to its palate " :
this had been the ironical advice of the scoffing
Aristophanes.
That practice made the mob orator contemptible
to manly tastes, rather than hateful. But the sacrifice
of independence the " pride which licks the dust" -is the
readiest training for all uncharitableness and falsehood towards
those who seem either rivals for the same base purposes,
or open antagonists
for nobler. And,
accordingly, it
is remarked by Euripides that these pestilent abusers of the
popular confidence would bring a mischief upon Athens before
they had finished, equally by their sycophancies to the mob and
by their libels of foreign princes. Hundreds of years afterwards,
a Greek writer, upon reviewing this
period of one hundred and eleven years,
most interesting
from Pericles to Alexander,
sums up and repeats the opinion of Euripides
in this
general representative portrait of Attic orator)', with respect,
to which we wish to ask, Can any better delineation be Lriveii of
aCharti>t, or generically of a modern Jacobin?
'O Brjfiayco-
709 vaKo8i&a(TKa\i rovs TroXXoi*?, Xeywv ra Ke^apicra^eva
"The moh lender dupe- the multitude with false doctrines,
whilst delivering things soothing to their credulous vanity."
This is one half of his office, sycophancy to the immediate
purx-holders, and poison to the MHIIVCS of truth; the other
half
:
with the irit of prophecy B
the British future, tccu &ay3o\eu