[7]
Again,
their epigrams, the sole objects of their quest, seem
all the more striking because of the dreariness and
squalor of their context, since flashes are more
clearly seen against a background, not of mere
“shade,” as Cicero1 says, but of pitchy darkness.
Well, let the world credit them with as much genius
as it pleases, so long as it is admitted that such
praise is an insult to any man of real eloquence.
1 de Or. III. xxvi. 101.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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