[21]
Such expressions are regarded as ingenious,
daring and eloquent, simply because of their ambiguity, and quite a number of persons have become
infected by the belief that a passage which requires
a commentator must for that very reason be a
masterpiece of elegance. Nay, there is even a class
of hearer who find a special pleasure in such passages; for the fact that they can provide an answer
to the riddle fills them with an ecstasy of self-congratulation, as if they had not merely heard the
phrase, but invented it.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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