[15]
However, to return to the point from which I had
digressed. Written narratives should be composed
with the utmost care. It is useful at first, when a
child has just begun to speak, to make him repeat
what he has heard with a view to improving his
powers of speech; and for the same purpose, and
with good reason, I would make him tell his story
from the end back to the beginning or start in the
middle and go backwards or forwards, but only so
long as he is at his teacher's knee and while he is
incapable of greater effort and is beginning to connect words and things, thereby strengthening the
memory. Even so when he is beginning to understand the nature of correct and accurate speech,
extempore effusions, improvised without waiting
for thought to supply the matter or a moment's
[p. 233]
hesitation before rising to the feet, must not be permitted: they proceed from a passion for display that
would do credit to a common mountebank.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.