"many people profess law who know nothing about it;
but even the very men who have acquired eloquence conceal their
attainment of it, because wisdom is a thing agreeable to men, but
eloquence is suspected by them." Is it possible then for eloquence to
escape notice, or does that which a man conceals cease to exist? Or is
there any danger of any one thinking with respect to an important and
glorious art that it is a discreditable thing to teach others that
which it was very honourable to himself to learn? But perhaps others
may be better hands at concealment; I have always openly avowed that I
have learnt the art. For what could I have done, having left my home
when very young, and crossed the sea for the sake of those studies;
and having had my house full of the most learned men, and when there
were perhaps some indications of learning in my conversation; and when
my writings were a good deal read; could I then have concealed the
fact of my having learnt it? How could I justify myself except by
showing that I had made some progress in those studies?

XLIII. And as this is the case still, the things which have been
already mentioned, have had more dignity in the discussion of them
than those which have got to be discussed. For we are now to speak
about the arrangement of words, and almost about the counting and
measuring of syllables. And, although these things are, as it appears
to me, necessary, yet there is more show in the execution than in
the teaching of them. Now that is true of everything, but it has a
peculiar force with respect to this pursuit. For in the case of all
great arts, as in that of trees, it is the height which delights us,
but we take no pleasure in the roots or trunks; though the one cannot
exist without the other. But as for me, whether it is that that
well-known verse which forbids a man

"To fear to own the art he practises,"

does not allow me to conceal that I take delight in it; or whether it
is your eagerness which has extorted this volume from me; still it was
worth while to make a reply to those whom I suspected of being likely
to find fault with me.

But if the circumstances which I have mentioned had no existence,
still who would be so harsh and uncivilised as not to grant me this
indulgence, so that, when my forensic labours and my public exertions
were interrupted, I might devote my time to literature rather than to
inactivity of which I am incapable, or to melancholy which I resis