Institutio Oratoria

IN the second book the subject of inquiry was the nature and the end of rhetoric, and I proved to the best of my ability that it was an art, that it was useful, that it was a virtue and that its material was all and every subject that might come up for treatment. I shall now discuss its origin, its component parts, and the method to be adopted in handling and forming our conception of each. For most authors of text-books have stopped short of this, indeed Apollodorus confines himself solely to forensic oratory.

I know that those who asked me to write this work were specially interested in that portion on which I am now entering, and which, owing to the necessity of examining a great diversity of opinions, at once forms by far the most difficult section of this work, and also, I fear, may be the least attractive to my readers, since it necessitates a dry exposition of rules.

In other portions of this work I have attempted to introduce a certain amount of ornateness, not, I may say, to advertise my style (if I had wished to do that, I could have chosen a more fertile theme), but in order that I might thus do something to lure our young men to make themselves acquainted with those principles which I regarded as necessary to the study of rhetoric: for I hoped that by giving them something which was not unpleasant to read I might induce a greater readiness to learn those rules which I feared

Lucretilus has the same object in mind when he states that he has set forth his philosophical system in verse; for you will remember the well known simile which he uses [*](iv. 11. See also i. 936.) :—

1. And as physicians when they seek to give
2. A draught of bitter wormwood to a child,
3. First smear along the edge that rims the cup
4. The liquid sweets of honey, golden-hued,

But I fear that this book will have too little honey and too much wormwood, and that though the student may find it a healthy draught, it will be far from agreeable. I am also haunted by the further fear that it will be all the less attractive from the fact that most of the precepts which it contains are not original, but derived from others, and because it is likely to rouse the opposition of certain persons who do not share my views. For there are a large number of writers, who though they are all moving toward the same goal, have constructed different roads to it and each drawn their followers into their own.

The latter, however, approve of the path on which they have been launched whatever its nature, and it is difficult to change the convictions implantted in boyhood, for the excellent reason that everybody prefers to have learned rather than to be in process of learning.

But, as will appear in the course of this book, there is an infinite diversity of opinions among writers on [his subject, since some have added their own discoveries to those portions of the art which were still shapeless and unformed,