and even in animals and trees, that nothing is more graceful than
magnitude, if accompanied with proportion. The same holds true
in pleading; and even in books a large volume carries a certain
beauty and authority in its very size. My antagonist, who is
extremely dexterous at evading an argument, eludes all this, and
much more, which I usually urge to the same purpose, by insisting
that those very individuals, upon whose works I found my opinion,
made considerable additions to their speeches when they published
them. This I deny; and appeal to the harangues of numberless
orators, particularly to those of Cicero, for Murena and Varenus, in
which a short, bare notification of certain charges is expressed
under mere heads. Whence it appears that many things which he
enlarged upon at the time he delivered those speeches were
retrenched when he gave them to the public. The same excellent
orator informs us that, agreeably to the ancient custom, which
allowed only of one counsel on a side, Cluentius had no other
advocate than himself; and he tells us further that he employed
four whole days in defence of Cornelius; by which it plainly
appears that those speeches which, when delivered at their full
length, had necessarily taken up so much time at the bar were
considerably cut down and pruned when he afterwards compressed
them into a single volume, though, I must confess, indeed, a large
one. But good pleading, it is objected, is one thing, just
composition another. This objection, I am aware, has had some
favourers; nevertheless, I ant persuaded (though I may, perhaps, be
mistaken) that, as it is possible you may have a good pleading
which is not a good speech, so a good speech cannot be a bad
pleading; for the speech on paper is the model and, as it were, the
archetype of the speech that was delivered. It is for this reason we
find, in many of the best speeches extant, numberless