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Book 2 - Chapter 11
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Some think instruction in oratory unnecessary, § 1, 2. Boasts and practices of the ignorant, 3-5. Some study only parts of their speeches; want of connection in their matter, 6, 7.
1. FROM this point, then, I am to enter upon that portion of the art with which those who have omitted the preceding portions usually commence. I see, however, that some will oppose me at the very threshold, men who think that eloquence has no need of rules of this kind, and who, satisfied with their own natural ability, and the common methods of teaching and exercise in the schools, even ridicule my diligence, following the example of certain professors of great reputation. It was one of those characters, I believe, who being asked what a figure and what a thought was, answered that "he did not know, but that, if it had any relation to his subject, it would be found in his declamation." 2. Another of them replied to a person who asked him "whether he was a follower of Theodorus or Apollodorus," "I am a prizefighter." Nor could he indeed have escaped an avowal of his ignorance with greater wit. But such men, as they have attained eminent repute through the goodness of their natural powers and have uttered many things even worthy of remembrance, have had very many imitators that resemble them in negligence, but very few that approach them in ability. 3. They make it their boast that they speak from impulse and merely exert their natural powers, and say that there is no need of proofs or arrangement in fictitious subjects, but only of grand thoughts, to hear which the auditory will be crowded, and of which the best are the offspring of venturesomeness. 4. In meditation, also, as they use no method they either wait, often for some days, looking at the ceiling for some great thought that may spontaneously present itself, or exciting themselves with inarticulate sounds, as with a trumpet, they adapt the wildest gestures of body, not to the utterance, but to the excogitation of words.
5. Some, before they have conceived any thoughts, fix upon certain heads, under which something eloquent is to be introduced; but, after modulating their words to themselves, aloud and for a long time, they desert their proposed arrangement from despairing of the possibility of forming any connection, and then turn to one train of ideas, and again to another, all equally common and hackneyed. 6. Those, however, who seem to have most method do not bestow their efforts on fictitious causes, but on common topics, in which they do not direct their view to any certain object, but throw out detached thoughts as they occur to them. 7. Hence it happens that their speech, being unconnected and made up of different pieces, cannot hang together, but is like the notebooks of boys, in which they enter promiscuously whatever has been commended in the declamations of others. Yet they sometimes strike out fine sentiments and good thoughts (for so indeed they are accustomed to boast), but barbarians and slaves do the same, and if this be sufficient, there is no art at all in eloquence.
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