they have been practised. Whence those men benefit themselves most, who
seem least desirous of praise; for when the frivolous parade of
eloquence has ceased its bursts of thunder among its own applauders, the
more potent applause of true talents will appear in genuine splendor;
the judges will not conceal the impressions which have been made on
them; the sense of the learned will outweigh the opinion of ignorance:
so true it is that it is the winding up of the discourse, and the
success attending it, that must prove its true merit.


AVOIDING OSTENTATION

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.