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It is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which he describes with such playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's criticism is indorsed by all scholars. "Lyricorum Horatius fere solus legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax."
Of the 121 figures which Puttenham defines and illustrates, Professor Van Hook has traced 107 to Quintilian's rhetoric . Professor Schelling refuses to treat this third book in his Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth, because, he says, it does not fall within the scope of his purpose, being made up of matters rhetorical, as applicable to prose as to verse . That Puttenham did include it, however, is most significant evidence that both the author and his reading public considered these adornments an essential part of poetry.
When I sent him Sombre Lives, he wrote me an unending letter in which he attempted to convince me that I ought to append a lesson or moral, to every tale. If I did not wish to write them, he offered to do it himself. Silverio thought that literature was not to be composed like history, according to Quintilian's definition, ad narrandum, but ad probandum.
The latter were, of course, rather materials for history than history itself, even when they were not excluded from Quintilian's famous definition of history by being composed primarily as political pamphlets. The former had so far been attempted on too large a scale, and with insufficient equipment either of research or style, to attain any permanent merit.
This gave him the great advantage of being a ripe writer before he challenged the judgment of the world; and, in truth, Quintilian's knowledge and love of his subject are thorough in the highest degree.
Neither do you have your great orators at every street corner. Their masters only build theatres for them when some great occasion arises in the land, and when the best wisdom must straightway be spoken to the people and in the best way. Then you bring up Quintilian's orator if you have him at your call.
Here the bene implies not only effectiveness, but moral worth; for in Quintilian's conception the orator is a good man skilled in public speech, and there are times when, as in the case of Socrates, who refused to defend himself, to persuade would be dishonorable. Quintilian's precepts, however, are more in line with Aristotle than his definition.
LARGUS LICINIUS, the author of Ciceromastix, may perhaps be referred to this time. The reiterated commendation of Cicero occurring in Quintilian may have roused the modernising party into active opposition, and drawn out this brochure. History and philosophy both sunk to an extremely low ebb; no writers on these subjects worthy of mention are preserved. Quintilian's Account of the Roman Authors.
Well, he could supply that easily enough. And what would he not learn? He would learn the city, the ignorance of which had resulted in his being hungry he, a young man college-bred, and with some knowledge of Quintilian's crabbedness, or the equations of X and Y in this or that or the Witch of Agnesi.
In the Silver Age Latin literature, feeling a great past behind it, definitely tried to cut itself away from Greece and stand on its own feet. Quintilian's criticism implies throughout that the two literatures were on a footing of substantial equality; Cicero is sufficient for him, as Virgil is for Statius.
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