[19]
On the other hand, it will sometimes also happen
that an audience whose taste is bad will fail to award
the praise which is due to the most admirable utterances. Reading, however, is free, and does not hurry
past us with the speed of oral delivery; we can reread a passage again and again if we are in doubt
about it or wish to fix it in the memory. We must
return to what we have read and reconsider it with
care, while, just as we do not swallow our food till
we have chewed it and reduced it almost to a state
of liquefaction to assist the process of digestion, so
what we read must not be committed to the memory
for subsequent imitation while it is still in a crude
state, but must be softened and, if I may use the
phrase, reduced to a pulp by frequent re-perusal.
[p. 15]
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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