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[4]
Take for example the whole of the
well-known passage from Cicero's defence of Sextus
Roscius:1 “For what is more common than the air
to the living, than the earth to the dead, than the
sea to mariners or the shore to shipwrecked men?”
etc. This passage was delivered at the age of
twenty-six amid loud applause from the audience,
but in later years2 he acknowledges that the ferment
of youth has died down and his style been clarified
with age. And, indeed, however much private study
may contribute to success, there is still a peculiar
proficiency that the courts alone can give: for there
the atmosphere is changed and the reality of the
[p. 417]
peril puts a different complexion on things, while, if
it is impossible to combine the two, practice without
theory is more useful than theory without practice.
Consequently,
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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