No More Learning

Sat. i. ver. 15.

Provok'd by these incorrigible fools,
I left declaiming in pedantic schools;
Where, with men-boys, I strove to get renown,
Advising Sylla to a private gown.
DRYDEN'S JUVENAL.


Section XV.

[a] The eloquence of Cicero, and the eminent orators of that age, was
preferred by all men of sound judgement to the unnatural and affected
style that prevailed under the emperors. Quintilian gives a decided
opinion. Cicero, he says, was allowed to be the reigning orator of his
time, and his name, with posterity, is not so much that of a man, as
of eloquence itself. _Quare non immerito ab hominibus ætatis suæ,
regnare in judiciis dictus est: apud posteros vero id consecutus, ut
Cicero jam non hominis, sed eloquentiæ nomen habeatur. _ Lib. x. cap.
1.
Pliny the younger professed that Cicero was the orator with whom he
aspired to enter into competition. Not content with the eloquence of
his own times, he held it absurd not to follow the best examples of a
former age. _Est enim mihi cum Cicerone æmulatio, nec sum contentus
eloquentiâ sæculi nostri. Nam stultissimum credo, ad imitandum non
optima quæque præponere. _ Lib. i. epist. 5.

[b] Nicetes was a native of Smyrna, and a rhetorician in great
celebrity. Seneca says (_Controversiarum_, lib. iv. cap. 25), that his
scholars, content with hearing their master, had no ambition to be
heard themselves. Pliny the younger, among the commendations which he
bestows on a friend, mentions, as a praise-worthy part of his
character, that he attended the lectures of Quintilian and Nicetes
Sacerdos, of whom Pliny himself was at that time a constant follower.
_Erat non studiorum tantum, verum etiam studiosorum amantissimus, ac
prope quotidie ad audiendos, quos tunc ego frequentabam, Quintilianum
et Niceten Sacerdotem, ventitabat. _ Lib.