[a] Quintilian, as well as Seneca, has left a collection of
school-declamations, but he has given his opinion of all such
performances. They are mere imitation, and, by consequence, have not
the force and spirit which a real cause inspires. In public harangues,
the subject is founded in reality; in declamations, all is fiction.
_Omnis imitatio ficta est; quo fit ut minus sanguinis ac virium
declamationes habeant, quam orationes; quod in his vera, in illis
assimulata materia est._ Lib. x. cap. 2. Petronius has given a lively
description of the rhetoricians of his time. The consequence, he says,
of their turgid style, and the pompous swell of sounding periods, has
ever been the same: when their scholars enter the forum, they look as
if they were transported into a new world. The teachers of rhetoric
have been the bane of all true eloquence. _Hæc ipsa tolerabilia
essent, si ad eloquentiam ituris viam facerent: nunc et rerum tumore,
et sententiarum vanissimo strepitu, hoc tantum proficiunt, ut quum in
forum venerint, putent se in alium terrarum orbem delatos. Pace vestrâ
liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis._ Petron. _in
Satyrico_, cap. 1 and 2. That gay writer, who passed his days in
luxury and voluptuous pleasures (see his character, _Annals_, b. xvi.
s. 18), was, amidst all his dissipation, a man of learning, and, at
intervals, of deep reflection. He knew the value of true philosophy,
and, therefore, directs the young orator to the Socratic school, and
to that plan of education which we have before us in the present
Dialogue. He bids his scholar begin with Homer, and there drink deep
of the Pierian spring: after that, he recommends the moral system;
and, when his mind is thus enlarged, he allows him to wield the arms
of Demosthenes.

----Det primos versibus annos,
Mæoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem: