I remember that your boyhood was competently taught in the liberal schools; and I have satisfied myself that you often declaimed before an orator ardently and eloquently.[27] Now blows the epos of tragedies, now soothes gay comedy, now flame satires and the oratory of debates on tyrants.[28] He would vary prosopopœia according to the quality of person, time, and place, and that in words not ordinary, but thought out as great and beautiful. In debate assignments [he was] strong and muscular.[29] The most extended reference is the letter to Remigius about the collection which had originally, perhaps, been his desk-book at Rheims, and which had been revised and copied for imitation. A certain Auvergnat on his way to Belgium ... filched from your scribe or bookseller, whether you will or not, at a price very large, though doubtless inadequate, the first draft of your _Declamationes_. When he came back to us ... I took care to have them all copied. It was the universal opinion that few such can now be spoken. For few, if any, bring to such assignments even an approximately equal ... aptness in examples, authority in evidence; propriety in epithets, urbanity in figures; force in argument, weight in appeal; flow of words, stroke of cadence. The structure, moreover, is strong and firm, the very clever transitions woven with pauses that cannot be resolved. Nor is it the less smooth, light, every way rounded, and such as aptly to speed a reader’s tongue without making it stumble, or stutter over rough combinations, or twist into the chamber of the palate. Finally all is liquid, ductile, as when the finger runs without a scratch over a surface of crystal or onyx.... There is no man now living whose discourse your skill cannot easily outdistance and surpass.[30] Interesting as is the glimpse of the transmission and traffic of books, it is quite overshadowed by the significance of such a collection. Evidently it was regarded not only as a storehouse for imitation in school, but as a work of literature. Similarly were collected early in the sixth century the _declamationes_ of Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia.[31] The letter of Sidonius specifies, moreover, those literary excellences which were sought alike in teaching and in professional practise. What he means, for instance, by firmness of _structura_ is not cogency of composition, but smoothness of style; and revision to this end involves meticulous adjustment to tongue and ear. Other references show equally that the exercises of the schools were carried, as in the earlier imperial centuries, into public speaking and literature. The orator’s achievement is not the persuasion of his fellow men; it is his own virtuosity. He spoke with order, weight, ardor, with great keenness, greater fluency, greatest skill.[32]