4. Secundus [a] complied with his friend's request. I yield, he said,
the more willingly, as I shall hazard no new opinion, but rather
confirm what has been urged by Messala. It is certain, that, as
painters are formed by painters, and poets by the example of poets, so
the young orator must learn his art from orators only. In the schools
of rhetoricians [b], who think themselves the fountain-head of
eloquence, every thing is false and vitiated. The true principles of
the persuasive art are never known to the professor, or if at any time
there may be found a preceptor of superior genius, can it be expected
that he shall be able to transfuse into the mind of his pupil all his
own conceptions, pure, unmixed, and free from error? The sensibility
of the master, since we have allowed him genius, will be an
impediment: the uniformity of the same dull tedious round will give
him disgust, and the student will turn from it with aversion. And yet
I am inclined to think, that the decay of eloquence would not have
been so rapid, if other causes, more fatal than the corruption of the
schools, had not co-operated. When the worst models became the objects
of imitation, and not only the young men of the age, but even the
whole body of the people, admired the new way of speaking, eloquence
fell at once into that state of degeneracy, from which nothing can
recover it. We, who came afterwards, found ourselves in a hopeless
situation: we were driven to wretched expedients, to forced conceits,
and the glitter of frivolous sentences; we were obliged to hunt after
wit, when we could be no longer eloquent. By what pernicious examples
this was accomplished, has been explained by our friend Messala.


5. We are none of us strangers to those unhappy times, when Rome,
grown weary of her vast renown in arms, began to think of striking