A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 247 pages of information about A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence.

A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 247 pages of information about A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence.
“The body is not one member, but many:  if the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? and if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body?  If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?  If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?  But now hath God set the members everyone of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.  And if they were all one member, where were the body?  But now are they many members, yet but one body:  and the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you.  And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”
             First Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xii.

This reasoning of St. Paul merits the attention of those friends of innovation, who are not content with the station in which God has placed them, and, therefore, object to all subordination, all ranks in society.

[b] Caesar the dictator was, as the poet expresses it, graced with both Minervas.  Quintilian is of opinion, that if he had devoted his whole time to the profession of eloquence, he would have been the great rival of Cicero.  The energy of his language, his strength of conception, and his power over the passions, were so striking, that he may be said to have harangued with the same spirit that he fought. Caius vero Caesar si foro tantum vacasset, non alius ex nostris contra Ciceronem nominaretur.  Tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse, quo bellavit, appareat. Lib. x. cap. 1.  To speak of Cicero in this place, were to hold a candle to the sun.  It will be sufficient to refer to Quintilian, who in the chapter above cited has drawn a beautiful parallel between him and Demosthenes.  The Roman orator, he admits, improved himself by a diligent study of the best models of Greece.  He attained the warmth and the sublime of Demosthenes, the harmony of Plato, and the sweet flexibility of Isocrates.  His own native genius supplied the rest.  He was not content, as Pindar expresses it, to collect the drops that rained down from heaven, but had in himself the living fountain of that copious flow, and that sublime, that pathetic energy, which were bestowed upon him by the bounty of Providence, that in one man eloquence might exert all her powers. Nam mihi videtur Marcus Tullius, cum se totum ad imitationem Graecorum contulisset, effinxisse vim Demosthenis, copiam Platonis, jucunditatem Isocratis.  Nec vero quod in quoque optimum fuit studio consecutus est tantum, sed plurimas vel potius omnes ex se ipso virtutes extulit immortalis ingenii beatissima ubertate.  Non enim pluvias (ut ait Pindarus) aquas colligit sed vivo gurgite exundat, dono quodam providentiae genitus, in quo vires suas eloquentia experiretur. Lib. x. cap. 1.

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