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.

IS ELOQUENCE A GIFT OF NATURE?

Some maintain that rhetoric is a gift of nature, yet admit that it may be helped by exercise.  Antonius, in Cicero’s books of the Orator, calls it a sort of observation and not an art.  But this opinion is not there asserted as truth, but only to keep up the character of Antonius, who was a connoisseur at concealing art.  Lysias seems to be of the same opinion, which he defends by saying that the most simple and ignorant people possess a kind of rhetoric when they speak for themselves.  They find something like an exordium, they make a narration, they prove, refute, and their prayers and entreaties have the force of a peroration.  Lysias and his adherents proceed afterward to vain subtleties.  “That which is the effect of art,” say they, “could not have existed before art.  In all times men have known how to speak for themselves and against others, but masters of rhetoric have been only of a late date, first known about the time of Tisias and Corax; therefore oratorical speech was prior to art, consequently it could not be the result of art, and therefore, rhetoric is not an art.”  We shall not endeavor to enquire into the time when rhetoric began to be taught, but this we may say, that it is certain Homer makes mention not only of Phoenix, who was a master, skilled in both speaking and fighting, but also of many other orators.  We may observe likewise from Homer, that all the parts of a discourse are found in the speech of the three captains deputed to Achilles, that several young men dispute for the prize of eloquence, and that among other ornaments of sculpture on the buckler of Achilles, Vulcan did not forget law-causes and the pleaders of them.