[75]
And when
any unusually precious phrase strikes the ears of an
uneducated audience, whatever its true merits, it
wakens their admiration just for the very reason
that they feel they could never have produced it
themselves. And it deserves their admiration, since
even such success is hard to attain. On the other
hand, when such displays are compared with their
betters, they sink into insignificance and fade out
of sight, for they are like wool dyed red that
pleases in the absence of purple, but, as Ovid1 says,
if compared with a cloak of Tyrian dye, pales in the
presence of the fairer hue.
1 Halm. Am. 707 sqq.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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