in some degree endurable, if teachers of that class taught only worse, and not less;) the other, which is even more common, that people imagine that those who have attained eminent qualifications for speaking will not descend to inferior matters, and that this is sometimes the case because they disdain to bestow attention on minuter points, and sometimes because they cannot give instruction in them. 5. For my part, I do not consider him, who is unwilling to teach little things,* in the number of preceptors; but I argue that the ablest teachers can teach little things best, if they will; first, because it is likely that he who excels others in eloquence, has gained the most accurate knowledge of the means by which men attain eloquence; 6. secondly, because method,† which, with the best qualified instructors, is always plainest, is of great efficacy in teaching; and lastly, because no man rises to such a height in greater things that lesser fade entirely from his view. Unless indeed we believe that though Phidias made a Jupiter well, another might have wrought, in better style than he, the accessories to the decoration of the work; or that an orator may not know how to speak; or that an eminent physician may be unable to cure tritling ailments. 7. Is there not then, it may be asked, a certain height of eloquence too elevated for the immaturity of boyhood to comprehend it? I readily confess that there is; but the eloquent professor must also be a man of sense, not ignorant of teaching, and lowering himself to the capacity of the learner; as any fast walker, if he should happen to walk with a child, would give him his hand, relax his pace, and not go on quicker than his companion could follow. 8. What shall be said, too, if it generally happens that instructions given by the most learned are far more easy to be understood, and more perspicuous than those of others? For perspicuity is the chief virtue of eloquence, and the less ability a man has, the more he tries to raise and swell himself out,‡ as those of short stature exalt themselves on tip-toe,§ and the weak use most * Comp. i. 4, 23. + Ratio.] Ratio is the same as theoria; opposed to praxis. Spalding. Quintilian means method; and intimates that the more learned teacher will be more methodical, the less learned less methodical. Turnebus. Dilatare.] In allusion, perhaps, to the fable of the frog and the ox, Phædr. i. 24. Spalding. § Staturâ breves in digitos eriguntur.] An illustration borrowed by threats. 9. As to those whose style is inflated, displaying a vitiated taste, and who are fond of sounding words,* or faulty from any other mode of vicious affectation, I am convinced that they labour under the fault, not of strength, but of weakness, as bodies are swollen, not with health, but with disease, and as men who have erred from the straight road generally make stoppages. Accordingly, the less able a teacher is, the more obscure will he be. 10. It has not escaped my memory, that I said in the preceding book,‡ (when I observed that education in schools was preferable to that at home,) that pupils commencing their studies, or but little advanced in them, devote themselves more readily to imitate their school-fellows than their master, such imitation being more easy to them. This remark may be understood by some in such a sense, that the opinion which I now advocate may appear inconsistent with that which I advanced before. 11. But such inconsistency will be far from me; for what I then said is the very best of reasons why a boy should be consigned to the best possible instructor, because even the pupils under him, being better taught than those under inferior masters, will either speak in such a manner as it may not be objectionable to imitate, or, if they commit any faults, will be immediately corrected, whereas the less learned teacher will perhaps praise even what is wrong, and cause it, by his judgment, to recommend itself to those Johnson in his Life of Gray, who, he says, is "tall by walking on tiptoe." * Tumidos, et corruptos, et tinnulos.] The tumidi are those who are foolishly ambitious of sublimity; the corrupti, those who are always aiming to say something witty or clever; the tinnuli, those who seek for fine-sounding words and phrases. Rollin. t Devertunt.] Devertunt in hospitia, go to seek lodging for the night, and thus arrive at a later period at their place of destination, which, if they had kept to the right road, they might have reached on the day on which they started. Spalding. An obscure passage, and perhaps not free from unsoundness. The second comparison, like the first, ought to indicate something wrong lying hid under the appearance of what is right. . . . We may suppose that those who have quitted the right track, seek for deverticula, bye-roads, for the sake of amusing themselves, or of shortening the remainder of their journey. Rollin. The reader may use his judgment as to which of these two illustrations is to be preferred. That of Rollin may receive something like support from Liv. ix. 7: Et legentibus velut deverticula amœna-quærerem. C. 2, sect. 26, who listen to it. 12. Let a master therefore be excellent as well in eloquence as in morals; one who, like Homer's Phoenix,* may teach his pupil at once to speak and to act. CHAPTER IV. Elementary exercises, § 1. Narratives, or statements of facts, 2-4. Exuberance in early compositions better than sterility, 4-8. A teacher should not be without imagination, or too much given to find fault with his pupil's attempts, 8-14. The pupil's compositions should be written with great care, 15-17. Exercises in confirmation and refutation, 18, 19. In commendation and censure of remarkable men, 20-21. Common places, 22, 23. Theses, 24, 25. Reasons, 26. Written preparations for pleadings, 27-32. Praise and censure of particular laws, 33-40. Declamations on fictitious subjects a later invention, 41, 42. I SHALL now proceed to state what I conceive to be the first duties of rhetoricians in giving instruction to their pupils, putting off for a while the consideration of what is alone called, in common language, the art of rhetoric; for to me it appears most eligible to commence with that to which the pupil has learned something similar under the grammarians. 2. Since of narrations, (besides that which we use in pleadings,) we understand that there are three kinds; the fable,t which is the subject of tragedies and poems, and which is remote, not merely from truth, but from the appearance of truth;§ the argumentum, which comedies represent, and which, though false, has a resemblance to truth; || and the history, in which is contained a relation of facts; and since we have consigned poetic narratives to the grammarians,¶ * Iliad, ix, 432. Or mythological subject. That is epic poems, in which we find much that is at variance, not only with truth, but with probability; narratives which Aristotle in his Poetics calls ἄλογα, ἀδύνατα. Capperonier. § As the fables of Atreus and Thyestes, Medea, Iphigenia, and all the stories of metamorphoses. Cic. Rhetor. i. 19. Camerarius. As approaching nearer to nature and the real events of life. Book i. c. 4. let the historical form the commencement of study under the rhetorician; a kind of narrative which, as it has more of truth, has also more of substance. 3. What appears to me the best method of narrating, I will show when I treat of the judicial part of pleading. In the meantime it will suffice to intimate that it ought not to be dry and jejune, (for what necessity would there be to bestow so much pains upon study, if it were thought sufficient to state facts without dress or decoration?) nor ought it to be erratic, and wantonly adorned with far-fetched descriptions, in which many speakers indulge with an emulation of poetic licence. 4. Both these kinds of narrative are faulty; yet that which springs from poverty is worse than that which comes from exuberance. From boys perfection of style can neither be required nor expected; but the fertile genius, fond of noble efforts, and conceiving at times a more than reasonable degree of ardour, is greatly to be preferred. Nor, if there be something or exuberance in a pupil of that age, would it at all displease me. I would even have it an object with teachers themselves to nourish minds that are still tender with more indulgence, and to allow them to be satiated, as it were, with the milk of more liberal studies. The body, which mature age may afterwards nerve, may for a time be somewhat plumper than seems desirable. 6. Hence there is hope of strength; while a child that has the outline of all his limbs exact commonly portends weakness in subsequent years. Let that age be daring, invent much, and delight in what it invents, though it be often not sufficiently severe and correct. The remedy for exuberance is easy; barrenness is incurable by any labour. 7. That temper in boys will afford me little hope in which mental effort is prematurely restrained by judgment. I like what is produced to be extremely copious, profuse even beyond the limits of propriety. Years will greatly reduce superfluity; judgment will smooth away much of it; something will be worn off, as it were, by use, if there be but metal from which something may be hewn and polished off, and such metal there will be, if we do not make the plate too thin at first, so that deep cutting may break it. 8. That I hold such opinions concerning this age, he will be less likely to * Book iv. c. 2. wonder who shall have read what Cicero * says: "I wish fecundity in a young man to give itself full scope.' Above all, therefore, and especially for boys, a dry master is to be avoided, not less than a dry soil, void of all moisture, for plants that are still tender. Under the influence of such a tutor, they at once become dwarfish, looking as it were towards the ground, and daring to aspire to nothing above every day talk. To them, leanness is in place of health, and weakness instead of judgment; and, while they think it sufficient to be free from fault, they fall into the fault of being free from all merit. Let not even maturity itself, therefore, come too fast; let not the must, while yet in the vat, become mellow, for so it will bear years, and be improved by age 10. Nor is it improper for me, moreover, to offer this admonition; that the powers of boys sometimes sink under too great severity in correction; for they despond, and grieve, and at last hate their work, and, what is most prejudicial, while they fear every thing, they cease to attempt any thing. 11. There is a similar conviction in the minds of the cultivators of trees in the country, who think that the knife must not be applied to tender shoots, as they appear to shrink from the steel, and to be unable as yet to bear an incision. 12. A teacher ought therefore to be as agreeable as possible, that remedies, which are rough in their own nature, may be rendered soothing by gentleness of hand; he ought to praise some parts of his pupils' performances, to tolerate some, and to alter others, giving his reasons why the alterations are made; and also to make some passages clearer by adding something of his own. It will also be of service too at times, for the master to dictate whole subjects himself, which the pupil may imitate and admire for the present as his own. 13. But if a boy's composition were so faulty as not to admit of correction, I have found him benefited whenever I told him to write on the same subject again, after it had received fresh treatment from me, observing that "he could do still better," since study is cheered by nothing more than hope. 14. Different ages, however, are to be corrected in different ways, and work is to be required and amended according to the degree of the pupil's abilities. I used to say to boys when * De Orat. ii. 21. |