[24]
For as a rule the result of the dry textbooks on the art of rhetoric is that by straining
after excessive subtlety they impair and cripple
all the nobler elements of style, exhaust the lifeblood of the imagination and leave but the bare
bones, which, while it is right and necessary that
they should exist and be bound each to each by
their respective ligaments, require a covering of flesh
as well.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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