An Improvisation
24. You have asked me to give you an improvisation. Listen then. You have heard me speak prepared, now hear me unprepared. I think I risk but little in making an attempt to speak without premeditation in view of the extraordinary approval which I have won by my set speeches. For having pleased you by more serious efforts, I have no fear of displeasing you when I speak on a frivolous subject. But in order that you may know me in all my infinite variety, make trial of me in what Lucilius called
The improviser’s formless art,
and see whether I have the same skill at short notice as I have after preparation; if indeed there be any of you who have never heard the trifles I toss off on the spur of the moment. You will listen to them with the same critical exactitude that I have bestowed on their composition, but with greater complaisance, I hope, than I can feel in reciting them. For prudent judges are wont to judge finished works by a somewhat severe standard, but are far more complaisant to improvisations. For you weigh and examine all that is actually written, but in the case of extempore speaking pardon and criticism go hand in hand, as it is right they should. For what we read forth from manuscript will remain such as it was when set down, even though you say nothing, but those words which I must utter now and the travail of whose birth you must share with me, will be just such as your favour shall make them. For the more I modify my style to suit your taste, the more I shall please you.64 I see that you hear me gladly. From this moment it lies with you to furl or spread my sails, that they hang not slack and drooping nor be reefed and brailed.
I will try to apply the saying of Aristippus. Aristippus was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy and was a disciple of Socrates—a fact which he regarded as the greater honour of the two. A certain tyrant asked him what benefit he had derived from so long and so devoted a study of philosophy. ‘It has given me the power,’ replied Aristippus, ‘to converse with all men without fear or concern.’
My speech has begun with a certain abruptness of expression due to the suddenness with which the subject suggested itself to me. It is as though I were building a loose wall in which one must be content to pile the stones haphazard without filling the interior with rubble, levelling the front, or making all lines true to rule. For in building up this speech I shall not bring stones from my own quarry, hewn foursquare and planed on all sides with their outer edge cut smooth and level, so that the nail slips lightly over it. No! at every point I must fit in material that is rough and uneven, or slippery and smooth, or jagged, projecting and angular, or round and rolling. There will be no correction by rule, no measure or proportion, no attention to the perpendicular. For it is impossible to produce a thing on the spur of the moment and to give it careful consideration, nor is there anything in the world that can hope at one and the same time to be praised for its care and admired for its speed.