totle's idea as to "invention" in logic.
Aristotle's work is, I am informed, in eight books: here is a bagatelle
in twenty-five pages. There is an audacity in the performance--especially
in the doing it on board ship; but we must remember that he had spent his
life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down
with all the rapidity of a practised professor the doctrines on the
matter which he wished to teach Trebatius.

This later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which
an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher, or statesman, may
look for his arguments. That they should have been of any great use to
Trebatius, in the course of his long life as attorney-general about the
court of Augustus, I cannot believe. I do not know that he rose to
special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor;
nor do I think that oratory, or the powers of persuasion, can be so
brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. And here
they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. It is for modern
readers perhaps the least interesting of all Cicero's works.

There is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of
the immense amount of attention which, in the Roman educated world, was
paid to the science of speaking. To bring his arguments to bear at the
proper moment--to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the
minds of men--to know when the sympathies may be expected and when
demanded, when the feelings may be trusted and when they have been too
blunted to be of service--to perceive from an instinctive outlook into
those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate and when
melting--this was the business of a Roman orator. And this was to be
achieved only by a careful study of the characters of men. It depended
in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on
education. How he might please the multitude--this was everything to
him. It was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic
world in London we have been told that men ought not to attempt. They do
attempt it, but they fail--through the innate honesty which there is in
the hearts of men. In Italy, in Cicero's time, they attempted it, and
did not fail. But we can see what were the results.

The attention which Roman orators paid to their voices was as serious,
and demanded the same restraint, as the occupations of the present
athlete