The contradictions of the Stoics (28)

He defines Rhetoric to be an art concerning the ornament and the ordering of a discourse that is pronounced. And farther in his First Book he has written thus: And I am not only of opinion that a regard ought to be had to a liberal and simple adorning of words, but also that care is. to be taken for proper delivery, as regards the right elevation of the voice and the compositions of the countenance and hands. Yet he, who is in this place so curious and exact, again in the same book, speaking of the collision of the vowels, says: We ought not only to let these things pass, minding somewhat that is better, but also to neglect certain obscurities and defects, nay, solecisms also, of which others, and those not a few, would be ashamed. Certainly, in one place to allow those who would speak eloquently so carefully to dispose their speech as even to observe a decorum in the very composition of their mouth and hands, and in another place to forbid the taking care of defects and obscurities, and the being ashamed even of committing solecisms, is the property of a man who little cares what he says, but rashly utters whatever comes first into his mouth.