[7]
To my
mind the boy who gives least promise is one in
whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the
imagination. I like to see the first fruits of the mind
copious to excess and almost extravagant in their
profusion. The years as they pass will skim off
much of the froth, reason will file away many
excrescences, and something too will be removed
by what I may perhaps call the wear and tear of
life, so long as there is sufficient material to admit
of cutting and chiselling away. And there will
be sufficient, if only we do not draw the plate too
thin to begin with, so that it runs the risk of being
broken if the graver cut too deep.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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