Institutio Oratoria

For it is only with reluctance that such speakers will under such circumstances consent to abandon what they have written, and throughout their pleading keep looking back and trying to discover whether any portion of their manuscript can be saved from the wreck and interpolated into what they have to improvise. And if they do make such interpolations, the result is a lack of' cohesion which is betrayed not merely by the gaping of the seams where the patch has been unskilfully inserted, but by the differences of style.

Consequently, the vigour of their eloquence will be hampered and their thought will lack connexion, each of which circumstances reacts unfavourably upon the other, since what is written trammels the mind instead of following its lead. Therefore, in such pleadings we must, as the rustic adage says,

stand on all our feet.