With
the practical purpose of fitting his countrymen to speak with ease and
effect in public, he treated, after the pattern of the ancients,
invention, declamation, bearing, and gesticulation, each in its proper
connection. Elsewhere too we read of an oratorical training directed
solely to practical application. No accomplishment was more highly
esteemed than the power of elegant improvisation in Latin. The growing
study of Cicero's speeches and theoretical writings, of Quintilian and
of the imperial panegyrists, the appearance of new and original
treatises, the general progress of antiquarian learning, and the stores
of ancient matter and thought which now could and must be drawn from,
all combined to shape the character of the new eloquence.
This character nevertheless differed widely according to the
individual. Many speeches breathe a spirit of true eloquence,
especially those which keep to the matter treated of; of this kind is
the mass of what is left to us of Pius II. The miraculous effects
produced by Giannozzo Manetti point to an orator the like of whom has
not been often seen. His great audiences as envoy before Nicholas V and
before the Doge and Council of Venice were events not to be soon
forgotten. Many orators, on the contrary, would seize the opportunity,
not only to flatter the vanity of distinguished hearers, but to load
their speeches with an enormous mass of antiquarian rubbish.
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