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Book 2 - Chapter 1
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Boys are not put under the professor of rhetoric early enough; reasons why they should begin to receive instruction from him at an earlier age, § 1-3. The professions of the grammarian and teacher of rhetoric should be in some degree united, 4-13.
1. IT has been a prevalent custom (which daily gains ground more and more) for pupils to be sent to the teachers of eloquence, to the Latin teachers always, and to the Greeks sometimes at a more advanced age than reason requires. Of this practice there are two causes: that the rhetoricians, especially our own, have relinquished a part of their duties, and that the grammarians have appropriated what does not belong to them. 2. The rhetoricians think it their business merely to declaim and to teach the art and practice of declaiming, confining themselves, too, to deliberative and judicial subjects (for others they despise as beneath their profession), while the grammarians, on their part, do not deem it sufficient to have taken what has been left them (on which account also gratitude should be accorded them), but encroach even upon prosopopeiae and suasory speeches, in which even the very greatest efforts of eloquence are displayed. 3. Hence, accordingly, it has happened that what was the first business of the one art has become the last of the other and that boys of an age to be employed in higher departments of study remain sunk in the lower school and practise rhetoric under the grammarian. Thus, what is eminently ridiculous, a youth seems unfit to be sent to a teacher of declamation until he already knows how to declaim.
4. Let us assign each of these professions its due limits. Let grammar (which, turning it into a Latin word, they have called literatura, "literature") know its own boundaries, especially as it is so far advanced beyond the humility indicated by its name, to which humility the early grammarians restricted themselves. Though weak at its source, yet having gained strength from the poets and historians, grammar now flows on in a full channel; since, besides the art of speaking correctly, which would otherwise be far from a comprehensive art, it has engrossed the study of almost all the highest departments of learning. 5. And let not rhetoric, to which the power of eloquence has given its name, decline its own duties or rejoice that the task belonging to itself is appropriated by another, for while it neglects its duties, it is almost expelled from its domain. 6. I would not deny, indeed, that some of those who profess grammar may make such progress in knowledge as to be able to teach the principles of oratory; but when they do so, they will be discharging the duties of a rhetorician, and not their own.
7. We make it also a subject of inquiry when a boy may be considered ripe for learning what rhetoric teaches. In which inquiry it is not to be considered of what age a boy is, but what progress he has already made in his studies. That I may not make a long discussion, I think that the question when a boy ought to be sent to the teacher of rhetoric is best decided by the answer, when he shall be qualified. 8. But this very point depends upon the preceding subject of consideration, for if the office of the grammarian is extended even to suasory speeches, the necessity for the rhetorician will come later. If the rhetorician, however, does not shrink from the earliest duties of his profession, his attention is required even from the time when the pupil begins narrations and produces his little exercises in praising and blaming. 9. Do we not know that it was a kind of exercise among the ancients, suitable for improvement in eloquence, for pupils to speak on theses, commonplaces, and other questions (without embracing particular circumstances or persons), on which causes, as well real as imaginary, depend? Hence it is evident how dishonorably the profession of rhetoric has abandoned that department which it held originally and for a long time solely. 10. But what is there among those exercises of which I have just now spoken that does not relate both to other matters peculiar to rhetoricians and, indisputably, to the sort of causes pleaded in courts of justice? Have we not to make statements of facts in the forum? I know not whether that department of rhetoric is not most of all in request there. 11. Are not eulogy and invective often introduced in those disputations? Do not commonplaces, as well those which are levelled against vice (such as were composed, we read, by Cicero), as those in which questions are discussed generally (such as were published by Quintus Hortensius, as "Ought we to trust to light proofs?" "for witnesses" and "against witnesses?") mix themselves with the inmost substance of causes? 12. These weapons are in some degree to be prepared that we may use them whenever circumstances require. He who shall suppose that these matters do not concern the orator will think that a statue is not begun when its limbs are cast. Nor let any one blame this haste of mine (as some will consider it) on the supposition that I think the pupil who is to be committed to the professor of rhetoric is to be altogether withdrawn from the teachers of grammar. 13. To these also their proper time shall be allowed, nor need there be any fear that the boy will he overburdened with the lessons of two masters. His labor will not be increased, but that which was confounded under one master will be divided, and each tutor will thus be more efficient in his own province. This method, to which the Greeks still adhere, has been disregarded by the Latin rhetoricians and, indeed, with some appearance of excuse, as there have been others to take their duty.
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