[104]
“Urbanity is a
certain quality of language compressed into the limits
of a brief saying and adapted to delight and move
men to every kind of emotion, but specially suitable
to resistance or attack according as the person or
circumstances concerned may demand.” But this
definition, if we except the quality of brevity, includes all the virtues of oratory. For it is entirely
concerned with persons and things to deal with
which in appropriate language is nothing more nor
less than the task of perfect eloquence. Why he
insisted on brevity being essential I do not know,
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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