Let no one however demand from me a rigid
code of rules such as most authors of textbooks have
laid down, or ask me to impose on students of rhetoric a system of laws immutable as fate, a system in
which injunctions as to the exordium and its nature
lead the way; then come the statement of facts and
the laws to be observed in this connexion: next the
proposition or, as some prefer, the digression, followed
by prescriptions as to the order in which the various
questions should be discussed, with all the other rules,
which some speakers follow as though they had no
[p. 291]
choice but to regard them as orders and as if it were
a crime to take any other line.
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