No More Learning

He lards with flourishes his long harangue:
'Tis fine, say'st thou. What! to be prais'd, and hang?
Effeminate Roman! shall such stuff prevail,
To tickle thee, and make thee wag thy tail?
Say, should a shipwreck'd sailor sing his woe,
Wouldst thou be mov'd to pity, and bestow
An alms? What's more prepost'rous than to see
A merry beggar? wit in misery!
DRYDEN'S PERSIUS.

[f] For Cassius Severus, see s. xix. note [a].

[g] Gabinianus was a teacher of rhetoric in the reign of Vespasian.
Eusebius, in his Chronicon, eighth of Vespasian, says that Gabinianus,
a celebrated rhetorician, was a teacher of eloquence in Gaul.
_Gabinianus, celeberrimi nominis rhetor, in Galliâ docuit.
_ His
admirers deemed him another Cicero, and, after him, all such orators
were called CICERONES GABISTIANI.


Section XXVIII.

[a] In order to brand and stigmatise the Roman matrons who committed
the care of their infant children to hired nurses, Tacitus observes,
that no such custom was known among the savages of Germany. See
_Manners of the Germans_, s. xx. See also Quintilian, on the subject
of education, lib. i. cap. 2 and 3.

[b] Cornelia, the mother of the two Gracchi, was daughter to the first
Scipio Africanus. The sons, Quintilian says, owed much of their
eloquence to the care and institutions of their mother, whose taste
and learning were fully displayed in her letters, which were then in
the hands of the public. _Nam Gracchorum eloquentiæ multum contulisse
accepimus Corneliam matrem, cujus doctissimus sermo in posteros quoque
est epistolis traditus. _ Quint. lib. i. cap.