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[11] True merit is revealed by the power to expand what is naturally compressed, to amplify what is small, to lend variety to sameness, charm to the commonplace, and to say a quantity of good things about a very limited number of subjects.

For this purpose indefinite questions,1 of the kind we call theses, will be found of the utmost service: in fact, Cicero2 still exercised himself upon such themes after he had become the leading man in the state.

1 See III. v. 5 .sq.

2 Ad Att. IX. iv. 1.

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load focus Latin (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1922)
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