[7]
The result is a speech which, being composed of disconnected passages having nothing in
common with each other, must necessarily lack
cohesion and can only be compared to a schoolboy's
notebook, in which he jots down any passages from
the declamations of others that have come in for a
word of praise. None the less they do occasionally
strike out some good things and some fine epigrams,
such as they make their boast. Why not? slaves
and barbarians sometimes achieve the same effects,
and if we are to be satisfied with this sort of thing,
then good-bye to any theory of oratory.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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