[109]
But he did something more
than reproduce the best elements in each of these
authors by dint of careful study; it was to himself
that he owed most of, or rather all his excellences,
which spring from the extraordinary fertility of his
immortal genius. For he does not, as Pindar1 says,
“collect the rain from heaven, but wells forth with
living water,” since Providence at his birth conferred
this special privilege upon him, that eloquence should
make trial of all her powers in him.
1 The quotation is not found in Pindar's extant works.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.