XLII.  But the one is a, common study, and the other a novel one.  I admit that; but there is a reason for both these facts.  For it was sufficient to listen to the lawyers giving their answers, so that they who acted as instructors set aside no particular time for that purpose, but were at one and the same time satisfying the wants both of their pupils and their clients.  But the other men, as they devoted all their time, when at home, to acquiring a correct understanding of the causes entrusted to them, and arranging the arguments which they were to employ; all their time when in the forum to pleading the cause, and all the rest of their time in recruiting their own strength; what time had they for giving rules or lessons? and I do not know whether most of our orators have not excelled more in genius than in learning; therefore, they have been able to speak better than they could teach, while our ability is perhaps just the contrary.

But there is no dignity in teaching.—­Certainly not, if it is done as if one kept a school; but if a man teaches by warning, by exhorting, by asking questions, by giving information, sometimes by reading with his pupils and hearing them read, then I do not know, if by teaching anything you can sometimes make men better, why you should be unwilling to do it.  Is it honourable to teach a man what are the proper words to alienate consecrated property with, and not honourable to teach him those by which consecrated property may be maintained and defended?

“But,” men say, “many people profess law who know nothing about it; but even the very men who have acquired eloquence conceal their attainment of it, because wisdom is a thing agreeable to men, but eloquence is suspected by them.”  Is it possible then for eloquence to escape notice, or does that which a man conceals cease to exist?  Or is there any danger of any one thinking with respect to an important and glorious art that it is a discreditable thing to teach others that which it was very honourable to himself to learn?  But perhaps others may be better hands at concealment; I have always openly avowed that I have learnt the art.  For what could I have done, having left my home when very young, and crossed the sea for the sake of those studies; and having had my house full of the most learned men, and when there were perhaps some indications of learning in my conversation; and when my writings were a good deal read; could I then have concealed the fact of my having learnt it?  How could I justify myself except by showing that I had made some progress in those studies?

XLIII.  And as this is the case still, the things which have been already mentioned, have had more dignity in the discussion of them than those which have got to be discussed.  For we are now to speak about the arrangement of words, and almost about the counting and measuring of syllables.  And, although these things are, as it appears to me, necessary, yet there is more show in the execution than in the teaching of them.  Now that is true of everything, but it has a peculiar force with respect to this pursuit.  For in the case of all great arts, as in that of trees, it is the height which delights us, but we take no pleasure in the roots or trunks; though the one cannot exist without the other.  But as for me, whether it is that that well-known verse which forbids a man