[58]
There are, however, some
writers who deny that these are species of allegory,
and assert that they are actually tropes in themselves:
for they argue shrewdly that allegory involves an
element of obscurity, whereas in all these cases our
meaning is perfectly obvious. To this may be added
the fact that when a genus is divided into species, it
ceases to have any peculiar properties of its own: for
example, we may divide tree into its species, pine,
olive, cypress, etc., leaving it no properties of its own,
whereas allegory always has some property peculiar
to itself. The only explanation of this fact is that
it is itself a species. But this, of course, is a matter
of indifference to those that use it.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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