[41]
Religion, it is true,
forbids us to alter the words of these hymns and
we must treat them as sacred things. But what a
faulty thing is speech, whose prime virtue is clearness, if it requires an interpreter to make its meaning
plain! Consequently in the case of old words the
best will be those that are newest, just as in the
case of new words the best will be the oldest.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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