Most graduation advice—whether given in boom times or moments of crisis—depicts a future replete with untrammeled ground and endless unknowns. And if you take a look at commencement addresses from the past, you’ll see a glimpse of what people in power told privileged young people to believe in and sketches of what the future could be, which we can now consider next to the reality of what came next. Lapham’s Quarterly is revisiting the history of giving advice to graduates and others in the process of acquiring knowledge or skills.

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John Stuart Mill’s early childhood education prioritized the basics—ancient Greek and Roman history, tomes on arithmetic, Don Quixote for dessert. It wasn’t until the age of twelve, armed with years of reading, that he dove into serious works of rhetoric and logic. (For those skeptical that any of the aforementioned texts have much to offer someone who had lived so little, the philosopher admits in his Autobiography that “most of these reflections were beyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time, but they left seed behind, which germinated in due season.”) One of the thinkers he read for the first time at the age of twelve was Quintilian.

Owing to his obscure style and to the scholastic details of which many parts of his treatise are made up, [he] is little read and seldom sufficiently appreciated. His book is a kind of encyclopedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the whole field of education and culture, and I have retained through life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace to my reading of him, even at that early age.

Quintilian taught rhetoric in Rome, later collecting his thoughts on the pedagogy of his beloved subject in his Institutio Oratoria, published in 95 and read for many centuries thereafter by budding orators such as Mill. In the final section of the book, Quintilian, speaking to potential practitioners of politics and law, considers the question of the best age to start practicing the art of rhetoric. Was Mill’s father right about the benefits of early training? Are recent college graduates primed to beat their elders at convincing speechifying? Does the tradition of the wise commencement speaker win approval from our ancient arbiter? Regardless of the correct answer—if there is one—Quintilian believed that a good teacher, speaking to crowds large and small, will win the affection of those hoping to learn from them: “It is scarcely possible to say how much more readily we imitate those whom we like.”

The age at which the orator should begin to plead will of course depend on the development of his strength. I shall not specify it further, since it is clear that Demosthenes pleaded against his guardians while he was still a mere boy, Calvus, Caesar, and Pollio all undertook cases of the first importance before they were old enough to be qualified for the quaestorship, others are said to have pleaded while still wearing the garb of boyhood, and Augustus Caesar delivered a funeral oration over his grandmother from the public rostra when he was only twelve years old.

In my opinion we should aim at a happy mean. The unripe brow of boyhood should not be prematurely robbed of its ingenuous air nor should the young speaker’s powers be brought before the public while yet unformed, since such a practice leads to a contempt for study, lays the foundations of impudence, and induces a fault which is pernicious in all departments of life, namely, a self-confidence that is not justified by the speaker’s resources.

On the other hand, it is undesirable to postpone the apprenticeship of the bar till old age: for the fear of appearing in public grows daily and the magnitude of the task on which we must venture continually increases, and we waste time deliberating when we should begin till we find it is too late to begin at all. Consequently, it is desirable that the fruit of our studies should be brought before the public eye while it is still fresh and sweet, while it may hope for indulgence and be secure of a kindly disposition in the audience, while boldness is not unbecoming and boyish extravagance is regarded as a sign of natural vigor. Take for example the whole of the well-known passage from Cicero’s defense of Sextus Roscius: “For what is more common than the air to the living than the earth to the dead, than the sea to mariners or the shore to shipwrecked men?” This passage was delivered at the age of twenty-six amid loud applause from the audience, but in later years he acknowledges that the ferment of youth has died down and his style has been clarified with age. And, indeed, however much private study may contribute to success, there is still a peculiar proficiency that the courts alone can give: for there the atmosphere is changed and the reality of the peril puts a different complexion on things, while, if it is impossible to combine the two, practice without theory is more useful than theory without practice.

Consequently, some who have grown old in the schools lose their heads when confronted by the novelty of the law courts and wish that it were possible to reproduce all the conditions under which they delivered their exercises. But there sits the judge in silence, their opponent bellows at them, no rash utterance passes unnoticed and all assumptions must be proved, the clock cuts short the speech that has been laboriously pieced together at the cost of hours of study both by day and night, and there are certain cases which require simplicity of language and the abandonment of the perpetual bombast of the schools, a fact which these fluent fellows completely fail to realize. And so you will find some persons who regard themselves as too eloquent to speak in the courts.

On the other hand, the man whom we conducted to the forum while still young and in the charm of immaturity should begin with as easy and favorable a case as may be (just as the cubs of wild beasts are brought up to start with on softer forms of prey) and should not proceed straight from this commencement to plead case after case without a break or cause his talents to set and harden while they still require nourishment; on the contrary, as soon as he has come to realize the nature of the conflicts in which he will have to engage and the object to which his studies should be directed, he should take an interval of rest and refreshment. Thus, at an age to which boldness is still natural, he will find it easy to get over the timidity which invariably accompanies the period of apprenticeship and will not, on the other hand, carry his boldness so far as to lead him to despise the difficulties of his task. This was the method employed by Cicero: for when he had already won a distinguished position at the bar of his day, he took ship to Asia and there studied under a number of professors of philosophy and rhetoric, but above all under Apollonius Molon, whose lectures he had attended at Rome and to whom now at Rhodes entrusted the refashioning and recasting of his style. It is only when theory and practice are brought into a perfect harmony that the orator reaps the reward of all his study.

Read the other entries in our series: Lewis H. Lapham, Frederick Douglass, Virginia Gildersleeve, Kurt Vonnegut, and Qohelet.