Institutio Oratoria

But those who devote any serious attention to such study are very few indeed. For, to say nothing of those careless advocates who are quite indifferent as to what the pivot of the whole case may be, provided only there are points which, though irrelevant to the case, will give them the opportunity of declaiming in thunderous tones on the character of persons involved or developing some commonplace, there are some who are so perverted by vanity that, on the oft-repeated pretext that they are occupied by other business, they bid their client come to them on the day preceding the trial or early on the morning of the day itself, and sometimes even boast that they learnt up their case while sitting in court;