According to Plato young persons in the bloom of life can always manage somehow to excite a lover’s passion. If they are white he calls them ‘saint-like’; if swarthy, ‘virile’. [Sidenote: 45] A hook-nose is ‘regal’, a snub nose ‘piquant’; a sallow skin is a ‘complexion of honey’. He uses these pretty names, and is pleased and satisfied. Love has, indeed, an ivy-like gift for clinging to any pretext. Much less will an eager and earnest student of letters ever fail in inventiveness. In every speaker he will discover some grounds for reasonable applause. In the speech of Lysias, though Plato objects to its want of arrangement, and though he has no praise for its inventiveness, he nevertheless commends him for his manner of statement, and because there is ‘a clear round finish in the chiselling of every word’. [Sidenote: B] We might find fault with Archilochus for his subject-matter, Parmenides for his versification, Phocylides for his commonplaceness, Euripides for his garrulity, Sophocles for his inequality. Similarly one of the orators has no characterization, another exerts no passion, a third is lacking in grace and charm. Nevertheless each wins praise for a power to move and sway us in his own peculiar way. The hearer, then, has ample scope for showing good feeling to a speaker. In some instances it is sufficient if, without further declaration by word of mouth, we contribute a kindly eye, a genial expression, a friendly and agreeable mood. There are certain things for which even the man who is a total failure may [Sidenote: C] look, and which are but ordinary items of common etiquette for any and every audience. I mean an upright posture in our chairs, with no lolling or lounging; eyes kept directly upon the speaker; an air of businesslike attention; composure of countenance, with no sign, I need not say of insolence or peevishness, but of being taken up with other thoughts. If in every exacting task beauty is made up of a number of factors happily combined in a due proportion and harmony, ugliness is the prompt and immediate outcome of the faulty [Sidenote: D] omission or addition of this or that one element. And in this particular matter of listening, not only is there impropriety in a scowling brow, a disagreeable expression, a roving glance, a twisting of the body, and a crossing of the legs; but nodding or whispering to a neighbour, smiling, yawning sleepily, looking at the ground, and actions of a similar nature, are censurable and should be studiously avoided.