In this preparation the importance that he gives to writing, not only for general practise, but for the composition of a particular speech, may seem greater than is warranted by experience. Even so he is far from supporting those who represent classical oratory as having been generally written and memorized.[20] That the urgencies of public address could be met by that method is _a priori_ a difficult assumption; and even the spread of the oratory of display in his time, and his own professorial fondness for finish of style, did not lead Quintilian to urge memorizing generally and unreservedly. Rather what he offers under _memoria_ (XI. ii) has the usual wide ancient scope. It should be read in its connection with what he has already taught (X. vi. vii, page 80 above) about _cogitatio_. “All training rests upon memory.... It is the power that makes available funds of examples, laws, decisions, opinions, precedents, funds which the orator ought to have in abundance and at command. Rightly is it called the treasury of eloquence. “Those who plead much ought not only to retain surely, but to discern [bearings] quickly, not only to grasp what has been written by reading it over and over, but to follow the sequence of points and words in what has been [merely] thought out,[21] to remember the points made on the other side, and, instead of rebutting them seriatim, to bring them in where they will be opportune. Nay, extempore speaking seems to me to rest upon no less vigor of mind.[22] For while we are saying one thing, we have to be considering what we are going to say. So while thought (_cogitatio_) is always questing beyond what is [actually on the carpet], whatever it finds meantime it deposits, so to speak, in the memory; and the memory, as it were a third hand, transmits what it has received from forecast (_inventione_) to expression (_elocutioni_).” XI. ii. 1-3. Devices and exercises for training and applying such a faculty (XI. ii. 8-35) are summed up (36) under the two principles of _divisio_ and _compositio_, definiteness of outline and definiteness of sentence movement. The former is thus iterated for the third time (see X. vi. vii) as essential. The importance of the latter lies in the fact that the mind more readily retains settled rhythms (39). As verse is easier to memorize than prose, so periodic rhythms than unperiodic.[23] Thus Quintilian faces finally the question of learning by heart. That it was a question, even for Quintilian, shows that classical practise was divided, as modern practise is, by differences both in talent and in the field of habitual exercise.