It was customary with the ancients to hide their eloquence; and M.
Antonius advises orators so to do, in order that they may be the more
believed, and that their stratagems may be less suspected. But the
eloquence of those times could well be concealed, not yet having made an
accession of so many luminaries as to break out through every
intervening obstacle to the transmission of their light. But indeed all
art and design should be kept concealed, as most things when once,
discovered lose their value. In what I have hitherto spoken of,
eloquence loves nothing else so much as privacy. A choice of words,
weight of thought, elegance of figures, either do not exist, or they
appear. But because they appear, they are not therefore to be displayed
with ostentation. Or if one of the two is to be chosen, let the cause
rather than the advocate be praised; still the issue will justify him,
by his having pleaded excellently a very good cause. It is certain that
no one else pleads so ill as he who endeavors to please, while his cause
displeases; because the things by which he pleases must necessarily be
foreign to his subject.
The orator ought not to be so particular and vain as not to undertake
the pleading of the smaller kind of causes, as beneath him, or as if a
matter of less consequence should in any respect lessen the reputation
he has acquired. Duty indeed is a just motive for his undertaking them,
and he should wish that his friends were never engaged in any other
kind of suits, which in the main are set off with sufficient eloquence
when he has spoken to the purpose.