IMITATION, in Oratory, is an endeavour to resemble a speaker or writer in those qualities with regard to which we propose them to ourselves as patterns. The first historians among the Romans, says Cicero, were very dry and jejune, till they began to imitate the Greeks, and then they became their rivals. It is well known how closely Virgil has imitated Homer in his Æneid, Hesiod in his Georgics, and Theocritus in his Ecologues. Terence copied after Menander; and Plautus after Epicurus, as we learn from Horace, lib. ii. ep. ad August. who himself owes many of his beauties to the Greek lyric poets. Cicero appears, from many passages in his writings, to have imitated the Greek orators. Thus Quintilian says of him, that he has expressed the strength and sublimity of De-
mesthenes,
Immacu-
late
Impale.
mossiness, the copiousness of Plato, and the delicacy of Isocrates.