There would be no end were I to expatiate to the limit of my inclination
on the subject of the gift of speech and its utility. I shall pass,
therefore, to the following question, "Whether rhetoric be an art?"
Those who wrote rules for eloquence doubted so little its being so, that
they prefixt no other title to their books than "The art of speaking."
Cicero says that what we call rhetoric is only an artificial eloquence.
If this were an opinion peculiar to orators, it might be thought that
they intended it as a mark of dignity attached to their studies, but
most philosophers, stoics as well as peripatetics, concur in this
opinion. I must confess I had some doubt about discussing this matter,
lest I might seem diffident of its truth; for who can be so devoid of
sense and knowledge as to find art in architecture, in weaving, in
pottery, and imagine that rhetoric, the excellence of which we have
already shown, could arrive at its present state of grandeur and
perfection without the direction of art? I am persuaded that those of
the contrary opinion were so more for the sake of exercising their wit
on the singularity of the subject than from any real conviction.