History of Famous Orators | Page 5

our seats in a
private lawn, near a statue of Plato.
Then resuming the conversation,--"to recommend the study of

eloquence," said I, "and describe its force, and the great dignity it
confers upon those who have acquired it, is neither our present design,
nor has any necessary connection with it. But I will not hesitate to
affirm, that whether it is acquired by art or practice, or the mere powers
of nature, it is the most difficult of all attainments; for each of the five
branches of which it is said to consist, is of itself a very important art;
from whence it may easily be conjectured, how great and arduous must
be the profession which unites and comprehends them all.
"Greece alone is a sufficient witness of this:--for though she was fired
with a wonderful love of Eloquence, and has long since excelled every
other nation in the practice of it, yet she had all the rest of the arts much
earlier; and had not only invented, but even compleated them, a
considerable time before she was mistress of the full powers of
elocution. But when I direct my eyes to Greece, your beloved Athens,
my Atticus, first strikes my sight, and is the brightest object in my view:
for in that illustrious city the orator first made his appearance, and it is
there we shall find the earliest records of eloquence, and the first
specimens of a discourse conducted by rules of art. But even in Athens
there is not a single production now extant which discovers any taste
for ornament, or seems to have been the effort of a real orator, before
the time of Pericles (whose name is prefixed to some orations which
still remain) and his cotemporary Thucydides; who flourished,--not in
the infancy of the State, but when it was arrived at its full maturity of
power.
"It is, however, supposed, that Pisistratus (who lived many years before)
together with Solon, who was something older, and Clisthenes, who
survived them both, were very able speakers for the age they lived in.
But some years after these, as may be collected from the Attic Annals,
came the above-mentioned Themistocles, who is said to have been as
much distinguished by his eloquence as by his political abilities;--and
after him the celebrated Pericles, who, though adorned with every kind
of excellence, was most admired for his talent of speaking. Cleon also
(their cotemporary) though a turbulent citizen, was allowed to be a
tolerable orator.

"These were immediately succeeded by Alcibiades, Critias, and
Theramenes, whose manner of speaking may be easily inferred from
the writings of Thucydides, who lived at the same time: their discourses
were nervous and stately, full of sententious remarks, and so
excessively concise as to be sometimes obscure. But as soon as the
force of a regular and a well- adjusted speech was understood, a sudden
crowd of rhetoricians appeared,-- such as Gorgias the Leontine,
Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Protagoras the Abderite, and Hippias
the Elean, who were all held in great esteem,-- with many others of the
same age, who professed (it must be owned, rather too arrogantly) to
teach their scholars,--_how the worse might be made, by the force of
eloquence, to appear the better cause_. But these were openly opposed
by the famous Socrates, who, by an adroit method of arguing which
was peculiar to himself, took every opportunity to refute the principles
of their art. His instructive conferences produced a number of
intelligent men, and Philosophy is said to have derived her birth from
him;--not the doctrine of Physics, which was of an earlier date, but that
Philosophy which treats of men, and manners, and of the nature of
good and evil. But as this is foreign to our present subject, we must
defer the Philosophers to another opportunity, and return to the Orators,
from whom I have ventured to make a sort digression.
"When the professors therefore, abovementioned were in the decline of
life, Isocrates made his appearance, whos house stood open to all
Greece as the School of Eloquence. He was an accomplished orator,
and an excellent teacher; though he did not display his talents in the
Forum, but cherished and improved that glory within the walls of his
academy, which, in my opinion, no poet has ever yet acquired. He
composed many valuable specimens of his art, and taught the principles
of it to others; and not only excelled his predecessors in every part of it,
but first discovered that a certain metre should be observed in prose,
though totally different from the measured rhyme of the poets. Before
him, the artificial structure and harmony of language was unknown;--or
if there are any traces of it to be discovered, they appear to have been
made without design; which, perhaps, will be