[5]
His house
will, as in the days of old, be thronged by all
the best of the rising generation, who will seek to
learn from him as from an oracle how they may find
the path to true eloquence. And he as their father
in the art will mould them to all excellence, and
like some old pilot will teach them of the shores
whereby their ships must sail, of the harbours where
they may shelter, and the signs of the weather, and
will expound to them what they shall do when the
breeze is fair or the tempest blows. Whereto he
will be inclined not only by the common duty of
humanity, but by a certain passion for the task that
once was his, since no man desires that the art
wherein he was once supreme should suffer decay
or diminution.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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