ARS POET. ver. 310.
Good sense, that fountain of the muse's art,
Let the rich page of Socrates impart;
And if the mind with clear conception glow,
The willing words in just expressions flow.
FRANCIS'S HORACE.
[d] Epicurus made frequent use of the rhetorical figure called exclamation; and in his life, by Diogenes Lærtius, we find a variety of instances. It is for that manner of giving animation to a discourse that Epicurus is mentioned in the Dialogue. For the rest, Quintilian tells us what to think of him. Epicurus, he says, dismisses the orator from his school, since he advises his pupil to pay no regard to science or to method. Epicurus imprimis nos a se ipse dimittit, qui fugere omnem disciplinam navigatione quam velocissima jubet. Lib. xii. cap. 2. Metrodorus was the favourite disciple of Epicurus. Brotier says that a statue of the master and the scholar, with their heads joined together, was found at Rome in the year 1743.
It is worthy of notice, that except the stoics, who, without aiming at elegance of language, argued closely and with vigour, Quintilian proscribes the remaining sects of philosophers. Aristippus, he says, placed his summum bonum in bodily pleasure, and therefore could be no friend to the strict regimen of the accomplished orator. Much less could Pyrrho be of use, since he doubted whether there was any such thing in existence as the judges before whom the cause must be pleaded. To him the party accused, and the senate, were alike non-entities. Neque vero Aristippus, summum in voluptate corpora bonum ponens, ad hunc nos laborem adhortetur. Pyrrho quidem, quas in hoc opere partes habere potest? cui judices esse apud quos verba faciat, et reum pro quo loquatur, et senatum, in quo sit dicenda sententia, non liquebat. Quintil. lib. xii. cap. 2.
Section XXXII.
[a] We are told by Quintilian, that Demosthenes, the great orator of Greece, was an assiduous hearer of Plato: Constat Demosthenem, principem omnium Græciæ oratorum, dedisse operam Platoni. Lib. xii. cap. 2. And Cicero expressly says, that, if he might venture to call himself an orator, he was made so, not by the manufacture of the schools of rhetoric, but in the walks of the Academy. Fateor me oratorem, si modo sim, aut etiam quicumque sim, non ex rhetorum officinis, sed ex Academiæ spatiis extitisse. Ad Brutum Orator, s. 12.