_Homer_
We may begin properly with Homer.
He it is who gave birth to, and set the example for all parts of
eloquence, in the same way, as he himself says, as the course of rivers
and springs of fountains owe their origin to the ocean. No one, in great
subjects, has excelled him in elevation; nor in small subjects, in
propriety. He is florid and close, grave and agreeable, admirable for
his concise as well as for his copious manner, and is not only eminent
for poetical, but likewise oratorical, abilities.
_Æschylus_
Æschylus is the one who gave birth to tragedy. He is sublime, and grave,
and often pompous to a fault. But his plots are mostly ill-contrived and
as ill-conducted. For which reason the Athenians permitted the poets who
came after him to correct his pieces and fit them for the stage, and in
this way many of these poets received the honor of being crowned.
_Sophocles and Euripides_
Sophocles and Euripides brought tragedy to greater perfection; but the
difference in their manner has occasioned dispute among the learned as
to their relative poetic merits. For my part, I shall leave the matter
undecided, as having nothing to do with my present purpose. It must be
confest, nevertheless, that the study of Euripedes will be of much
greater value to those who are preparing themselves for the bar; for
besides the fact that his style comes nearer the oratorical style, he
likewise abounds in fine thoughts, and in philosophic maxims is almost
on an equality with philosophers, and in his dialog may be compared with
the best speakers at the bar. He is wonderful, again, for his masterly
strokes in moving the passions, and more especially in exciting
sympathy.
_Thucydides and Herodotus_
There have been many famous writers of history, but all agree in giving
the preference to two, whose perfections, tho different, have received
an almost equal degree of praise. Thucydides is close, concise, and ever
pressing on. Herodotus is sweet, natural, and copious. One is remarkable
for his animated expression of the more impetuous passions, the other
for gentle persuasion in the milder: the former succeeds in harangues
and has more force; the other surpasses in speeches of familiar
intercourse, and gives more pleasure.
_Demosthenes_
A numerous band of orators follows, for Athens produced ten of them,
contemporary with one another. Demosthenes was by far the chief of them,
and in a manner held to be the only model for eloquence; so great is
his force; so closely together are all things interwoven in his
discourse, and attended with a certain self-command; so great is his
accuracy, he never adopting any idle expression; and so just his
precision that nothing lacking, nothing redundant, can be found in him.
Æschines is more full, more diffusive, and appears the more grand, as he
has more breadth. He has more flesh, but not so many sinews.
_Lysias and Isocrates_
Lysias, older than these, is subtle and elegant, and if it is enough for
the orator to instruct, none could be found more perfect than he is.
There is nothing idle, nothing far-fetched in him; yet is he more like a
clear brook than a great river. Isocrates, in a different kind of
eloquence, is fine and polished, and better adapted for engaging in a
mock than a real battle. He was attentive to all the beauties of
discourse, and had his reasons for it, having intended his eloquence for
schools and not for contentions at the bar. His invention was easy, he
was very fond of graces and embellishments, and so nice was he in his
composition that his extreme care is not without reprehension.
_Plato_
Among philosophers, by whom Cicero confesses he has been furnished with
many resourceful aids to eloquence, who doubts that Plato is the chief,
whether we consider the acuteness of his dissertations, or his divine
Homerical faculty of elocution? He soars high above prose, and even
common poetry, which is poetry only because comprised in a certain
number of feet; and he seems to me not so much endowed with the wit of
a man, as inspired by a sort of Delphic oracle.
_Xenophon_
What shall I say of Xenophon's unaffected agreeableness, so unattainable
by any imitation that the Graces themselves seem to have composed his
language? The testimony of the ancient comedy concerning Pericles, is
very justly applicable to him, "That the Goddess of Persuasion had
seated herself on his lips."
_Aristotle and Theophrastus_
And what shall I say of the elegance of the other disciples of Socrates?
What of Aristotle? I am at a loss to know what most to admire in him,
his vast and profound erudition, or the great number of his writings, or
his pleasing style and manner, or the inventions and penetration of his
wit, or the variety of his works. And as to Theophrastus, his elocution
has something so noble and so divine that it may be said that from these
qualities came his name.
_Vergil_
In regard to our Roman authors, we can not more happily begin than with
Vergil, who of all their poets and ours in the epic style, is without
any doubt the one who comes nearest to Homer. Tho obliged to give way to
Homer's heavenly and immortal genius, yet in Vergil are to be found a
greater exactness and care, it being incumbent on him to take more
pains; so that what we lose on the side of eminence of qualities, we
perhaps gain on that of justness and equability.
_Cicero_
I proceed to our orators, who likewise may put Roman eloquence upon a
par with the Grecian. Cicero I would strenuously oppose against any of
them, tho conscious of the quarrel I should bring upon myself by
comparing him with Demosthenes in a time so critical as this; especially
as my subject does not oblige me to it, neither is it of any
consequence, when it is my real opinion that Demosthenes ought to be
particularly read, or, rather, committed to memory.
I must say, notwithstanding, that I judge them to be alike in most of
the great qualities they possest; alike in design, disposition, manner
of dividing, of preparing minds, of proving, in short in everything
belonging to invention. In elocution there is some difference. The one
is more compact, the other more copious; the one closes in with his
opponent, the other allows him more ground to fight in; the one is
always subtle and keen in argument, the other is perhaps less so, but
often has more weight; from the one nothing can be retrenched, neither
can anything be added to the other; the one has more study, the other
more nature.
Still ought we to yield, if for no other reason than because Demosthenes
lived before Cicero, and because the Roman orator, however great, is
indebted for a large part of his merit to the Athenian. For it seems to
me that Cicero, having bent all his thoughts on the Greeks, toward
forming himself on their model, had at length made constituents of his
character the force of Demosthenes, the abundance of Plato, and the
sweetness of Isocrates. Nor did he only, by his application, extract
what was best in these great originals, but by the happy fruitfulness of
his immortal genius he himself produced the greater part, or rather all,
of these same perfections. And to make use of an expression of Pindar,
he does not collect the water from rains to remedy a natural dryness,
but flows continually, himself, from a source of living waters, and
seems to have existed by a peculiar gift of Providence, that in him
eloquence might make trial of her whole strength and her most powerful
exertions.
For who can instruct with more exactness, and move with more vehemence?
What orator ever possest so pleasing a manner that the very things he
forcibly wrests from you, you fancy you grant him; and when by his
violence he carries away the judge, yet does the judge seem to himself
to obey his own volition, and not to be swept away by that of another?
Besides, in all he says there is so much authority and weight that you
are ashamed to differ from him in opinion; and it is not the zeal of an
advocate you find in him, but rather the faith and sincerity of a
witness or judge. And what, at the same time, is more admirable, all
these qualities, any one of which could not be attained by another
without infinite pains, seem to be his naturally; so that his
discourses, the most charming, the most harmonious, which possibly can
be heard, retain, notwithstanding, so great an air of happy ease that
they seem to have cost him nothing.
With good reason, therefore, is he said by his contemporaries to reign
at the bar, and he has so far gained the good graces of posterity that
Cicero is now less the name of a man than the name of eloquence itself.
Let us then keep him in view, let him be our model, and let that orator
think he has made considerable progress who has once conceived a love
and taste for Cicero.
_Cæsar_
If Cæsar had made the bar his principal occupation, no other of our
orators could better have disputed the prize of eloquence with Cicero.
So great is his force, so sharp his wit, so active his fire, that it
plainly appears he spoke with as much spirit as he fought. A wonderful
elegance and purity of language, which he made his particular study,
were a further embellishment of all these talents for eloquence.
_Philosophers_
It remains only to speak of those who have written on subjects of
philosophy. Hitherto we have had but few of this kind. Cicero, as in
all other respects, so also in this, was a worthy rival of Plato. Brutus
has written some excellent treatises, the merit of which is far superior
to that of his orations. He supports admirably well the weight of his
matter, and seems to feel what he says. Cornelius Celsus, in the manner
of the Skeptics, has written a good many tracts, which are not without
elegance and perspicuity. Plancus, among the Stoics, may be read with
profit, for the sake of becoming acquainted with the things he
discusses. Catius, an Epicurean, has some levity in his way, but in the
main is not an unpleasing author.
_Seneca_
I have designedly omitted speaking hitherto of Seneca,--who was
proficient in all kinds of eloquence,--on account of the false opinion
people entertained that I not only condemned his writings, but also
personally hated him. I drew this aspersion upon myself by my endeavor
to bring over eloquence to a more austere taste, which had been
corrupted and enervated by very many softnesses and delicacies. Then
Seneca was almost the only author young people read with pleasure. I did
not strive to exclude him absolutely, but could not bear that he should
be preferred to others much better, whom he took all possible pains to
cry down, because he was conscious that he had taken to a different
manner from their way of writing, and he could not otherwise expect to
please people who had a taste for these others. It was Seneca's lot,
however, to be more loved than imitated, and his partizans run as wide
from him as he himself had fallen from the ancients. Yet it were to be
wished that they had proved themselves like, or had come near, him. But
they were fond of nothing in him but his faults, and every one strove to
copy them if he could. Then priding themselves on speaking like Seneca,
of course they could not avoid bringing him into disgrace.
His perfections, however, were many and great. His wit was easy and
fruitful, his erudition considerable, his knowledge extensive--in which
last point he sometimes was led into mistakes, probably by those whom he
had charged to make researches for him. There is hardly a branch of
study on which he has not written something; for we have his orations,
his poems, epistles, and dialogs. In philosophic matters he was not so
accurate, but was admirable for his invectives against vice.
He has many bright thoughts, and many things are well worth reading in
him for improvement of the moral character; but his elocution is, for
the most part, corrupt, and the more dangerous because its vices are of
a sweet and alluring nature. One could wish he had written with his own
genius and another's judgment. For if he had rejected some things, if he
had less studiously affected some engaging beauties, if he had not been
overfond of all his productions, if he had not weakened the importance
of his matter by frivolous thoughts, he would have been honored by the
approbation of the learned rather than by the love of striplings.
However, such as he is, he may be read when the taste is formed and
strengthened by a more austere kind of eloquence, if for no other
reason than because he can exercise judgment on both sides. For, as I
have said, many things in him are worthy of praise, worthy even of
admiration if a proper choice had been made, which I wish he had made
himself, as indeed that nature is deserving of an inclination to embrace
what is better, which has ability to effect anything to which it
inclines.