_Asperitas_, which some would rather translate “trenchancy.” But there was an idea in ancient times (not quite unknown in modern) that in hostile argument politeness (“treating your adversary with respect,” as Johnson said) was out of place. Footnote 382: _Quæ virtus ei contraria_, that is to say, I suppose, brevity and pregnancy. “Transferred” just below, in the sense of _translatio_, “metaphor,” “what ingenuity of metaphor.” No reader, I hope, will need to have it pointed out to him, at any great length, how exactly this corresponds to the practice of the critical lecturer or reviewer, as it ought to be, in regard to all kinds of literature, and not oratory merely. Such a lecturer, or such a reviewer, can do no better than grave these words of Quintilian on his mind, and follow their directions as best he can, whensoever an author is to be expounded on the platform or reviewed in the column. It scarcely requires more than the easiest and most obvious substitutions and amplifications to make the passage a manual in miniature of all criticism, be it of prose or poetry. The other passage is the very curious and interesting section in the third chapter of the Sixth book, on Wit.[383] As is well known, this is one of the points on which ancient (especially Latin) and modern taste are most out of harmony. Except [Sidenote: _Wit._] Aristophanes at one end, with his alternations of outrageous farce and keen poetry, and Lucian at the other, with the innocent-seeming flow of his white-hot irony, there are perhaps not even any Greek authors whose command of our risibility is absolutely sure; and the average Greek joke, as reported by the anecdote-mongers, is to us but a vapid thing. In Latin it is even worse. Plautus pretty generally, but in a limited way; Catullus, when he exchanges passion for humour; sometimes Horace, for a pleasant Augustan “wit of the town”; Martial for a too often naughty _persiflage_,—these we have little doubt about. But Terence, even if we shut our eyes to his borrowed capital, is but comedy-and-water; Cicero jokes without indeed much difficulty on his part, but with surprisingly little effect on ours; and the _average_ Latin jest is far worse than the average Greek. Of course this is all natural enough; the jest always, save in certain transcendences, lies more in the ear of the hearer than the charm or quality of any other kind of literature. But it is all the more interesting and valuable to have a set discussion on the comic by a man of immense reading, excellent taste, and great acuteness. Besides, Quintilian’s Spanish blood or birth may very likely have given him a somewhat wider and more flexible appreciation of humour than the “firm Roman” wit itself allowed, or at least encouraged. Footnote 383: _Virtus quæ risum judicis movet_, VI. iii.