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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXVI
227

lowing solider and stronger food, as Afer shows very plainly in Tacitus.[1] The ambassadors from Samos had come to Cleomenes, King of Sparta, prepared with a fine and long speech, to incite him to war against the tyrant Polycrates. After he had heard them out, he replied: "As for your beginning and exordium, I no longer remember it; nor, consequently, the middle; and as for your conclusion, I do not desire to do any thing about it."[2] An excellent reply that, it seems to me, and haranguers well nonplussed. (b) And what of this other? The Athenians had to choose one of two architects to build a great edifice: the first, being more wily, presented himself with a fine prepared speech on the subject of this undertaking and won favour in popular judgement; but the other, in three words, "Athenians, what this man has said, I will do."[3]

(a) At the height of Cicero’s eloquence many were moved to admiration; but Cato merely laughed at it. "We have," he said, "an entertaining consul."[4] Whether it come before or after, a profitable phrase, a fine stroke of wit, is always in season. (c) If it does not fit what goes before or what comes after, it is good in itself. (a) I am not one of those who think that good rhythm makes a good poem: let him make a short syllable long if he will; about that it matters not;[5] if the conceptions are pleasing, if the mind and the judgement have played their parts well, "There ’s a good poet," I will say, "but a bad versifier," —

(b) Emunctæ naris, durus componere versus.[6]

(a) Let his work be divested, says Horace, of all its divisions[7] and measures, —

  1. ↑ See Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, XIX. The name is Aper. Montaigne misconstrues the text.
  2. ↑ See Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedæmonians.
  3. ↑ See Idem, Political Precepts.
  4. ↑ See Idem, Life of Cato. It was not Cicero's eloquence, but his jokes, at which Cato is said to have laughed.
  5. ↑ Pour cela, non force.
  6. ↑ Of keen scent, but harsh in the composition of his verses. — Horace, Satires, I, 4.8.
  7. ↑ Coustures.
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