1. THE custom has prevailed and is daily growing
commoner of sending boys to the schools of rhetoric
much later than is reasonable: this is always the
case as regards Latin rhetoric and occasionally
applies to Greek as well. The reason for this is
twofold: the rhetoricians, more especially our own,
have abandoned certain of their duties and the
teachers of literature have undertaken tasks which
rightly belong to others.
[2]
For the rhetorician considers that his duty is merely to declaim and give
instruction in the theory and practice of declamation
and confines his activities to deliberative and judicial
themes, regarding all others as beneath the dignity
of his profession; while the teacher of literature is
not satisfied to take what is left him (and we owe
him a debt of gratitude for this), but even presumes
to handle declamations in character and deliberative
themes,1 tasks which impose the very heaviest burden
on the speaker.
[3]
Consequently subjects which once
formed the first stages of rhetoric have come to
form the final stages of a literary education, and
boys who are ripe for more advanced study are kept
back in the inferior school and practise rhetoric
under the direction of teachers of literature. Thus
we get the absurd result that a boy is not regarded
as fit to go on to the schools of declamation till he
knows how to declaim.
[p. 207]
The two professions must each be assigned their
proper sphere.
[4]
Grammatice, which we translate as
the science of letters, must learn to know its own
limits, especially as it has encroached so far beyond
the boundaries to which its unpretentious name
should restrict it and to which its earlier professors
actually confined themselves. Springing from a tiny
fountain-head, it has gathered strength from the
historians and critics and has swollen to the dimensions of a brimming river, since, not content with the
theory of correct speech, no inconsiderable subject,
it has usurped the study of practically all the highest
departments of knowledge.
[5]
On the other hand
rhetoric, which derives its name from the power of
eloquence, must not shirk its peculiar duties nor rejoice to see its own burdens shouldered by others.
For the neglect of these is little less than a surrender
of its birthright.
[6]
I will of course admit that there
may be a few professors of literature who have
acquired sufficient knowledge to be able to teach rhetoric as well; but when they do so, they are performing the duties of the rhetorician, not their own.
[7]
A further point into which we must enquire concerns the age at which a boy may be considered
sufficiently advanced to profit by the instructions of
the rhetorician. In this connexion we must consider
not the boy's actual age, but the progress he has
made in his studies. To put it briefly, I hold that
the best answer to the question “When should a
boy be sent to the school of rhetoric?”
[8]
is this,
“When he is fit.” But this question is really dependent on that previously raised. For if the duties of
the teacher of literature are prolonged to include
instruction in deliberative declamation, this will
[p. 209]
postpone the need for the rhetorician. On the other
hand if the rhetorician does not refuse to undertake
the first duties of his task, his instruction will be required from the moment the boy begins to compose
narratives and his first attempts at passages of praise
or denunciation.
[9]
We know that the orators of
earlier days improved their eloquence by declaiming
themes and common-places2
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