Now that the formal study of rhetoric has ceased to be a part of the
higher education, the more strictly technical parts of Quintilian's work,
like those of the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, have, in a great measure, lost
their relevance to actual life, and with it their general interest to the
world at large. Both the Greek and the Roman masterpiece are read now
rather for their incidental observations upon human nature and the
fundamental principles of art, than for instruction in a particular form
of art which, in the course of time, has become obsolete. These
observations, in Quintilian no less than in Aristotle, are often both
luminous and profound, A collection of the memorable sentences of
Quintilian, such as has been made by his modern editors, is full of
sayings of deep wisdom and enduring value. _Nulla mansit ars qualis
inventa est, nec intra initium stetit; Plerumque facilius est plus
facere, quam idem; Nihil in studiis parvum est; Cito scribendo non fit ut
bene scribatur, bene scribendo fit ut cito; Omnia nostra dum nascuntur
placent, alioqui nec scriberentur_;--such sayings as these, expressed
with admirable terseness and lucidity, are scattered all over the work,
and have a value far beyond the limits of any single study. If they do
not drop from Quintilian with the same curious negligence as they do from
Aristotle (whose best things are nearly always said in a parenthesis),
the advantage is not wholly with the Greek author; the more orderly and
finished method of the Roman teacher marks a higher constructive literary
power than that of Aristotle, whose singular genius made him indeed the
prince of lecturers, but did not place him in the first rank of writers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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