[142] Middleton's Life, vol. ii. p. 254.
[143] Ad Quinct. fratr. iii. 3.
[144] Tusc. Quæst, v. 2.
[145] De Off. i. 5. init.
[146] Johnson's observations on Addison's writings may be well applied to those of Cicero, who would have been eminently successful in short miscellaneous essays, like those of the Spectator, had the manners of the age allowed it.
[147] Orat iii. 4; Tusc. Quæst. ii. 3; de Off. i. 1. Paradox. præfat. Quinct. Instit. xii. 2.
[148] Article, Plato, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.
[149] Acad. Quæst. i. 10, etc.; Lucullus, 5; de Legg. i. 20; iii. 3, etc.
[150] Acad. Quæst. i. 4, 12, 13; Lucullus, 5 and 23; de Nat. Deor. i. 5; de Fin. ii. 1; de Orat. iii. 18. Augustin. contra Acad. ii. 6. Plutarch, in Colot. 26.
[151] "Arcesilas negabat esse quidquam, quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum quod Socrates sibi reliquisset. Sic omnia latere censebat in occulto, neque esse quicquam quod cerni, quod intelligi, posset; quibus de causis nihil oportere neque profiteri neque affirmare quenquam, neque assentione approbare, etc."—Acad. Quæst. i. 12. See also Lucullus, 9 and 18. They were countenanced in these conclusions by Plato's doctrine of ideas.—Lucullus, 46.