[12]
Nor is it
easy to say which are the most serious offenders, those
who are satisfied with everything or those who are
satisfied with nothing that they write. For it is
of common occurrence with young men, however
talented they may be, to waste their gifts by superfluous elaboration, and to sink into silence through
an excessive desire to speak well. I remember in
this connexion a story that Julius Secundus, my contemporary, and, as is well known, my very dear friend,
a man with remarkable powers of eloquence, but
[p. 99]
with an infinite passion for precision, told me of the
words once used to him by his uncle,
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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