[26]
Poetry has risen to the heights
of glory, thanks to the efforts of poets so far apart
as Homer and Virgil, and oratory owes its position
to the genius of Demosthenes and Cicero. Finally,
whatever is best in its own sphere must at some
previous time have been non-existent. But even if
a man despair of reaching supreme excellence (and
why should he despair, if he have talents, health,
capacity and teachers to aid him?), it is none the
less a fine achievement, as Cicero1 says, to win the
rank of second or even third.
1 Or. i. 4.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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