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But their main spirit is independent of the accidents of any age or country. In the breadth of his ideas, and in the wisdom of much of his detailed advice, Quintilian takes a place in the foremost rank of educational writers.
We find from Quintilian, that Varro likewise composed satires in various kinds of verse.
"Nothing is further from my thoughts, I assure you. Your reasoning appeared to me to be too peremptory, that is all." "In what way, if you please, I am curious to know?" "It would take too long to tell you. Eleven o'clock is striking. I will content myself with offering you a bet. Your copy of Pliny against my Quintilian, that you have not judged rightly, and that the child is not Irish."
It is in three books, and draws largely on Quintilian, the first two books being substantially little more than a compilation, but a very judicious one, from the Institutes of Oratory. But Wilson is no pedant, and has many excellent remarks on the nature of the influence which the classics should exercise on English composition. One passage is worth transcribing
These two statues may be taken as the noblest creations of the Greek imagination when directed to the highest objects of its contemplation. The beauty of the Olympian Zeus, according to Quintilian, "added a new element to religion." In the works of art just mentioned the creative force of the Greeks attained its highest success.
Yet the later tradition of his acting was rather that he was serious and self-restrained; Horace calls him gravis, and Quintilian too speaks of his gravitas. Probably, like Garrick, he was capable of a great variety of moods and parts.
It was at this juncture that he defended the ex-tribune Cornelius, who had been accused of maiestas, with such surpassing skill as to draw forth from Quintilian a special tribute of praise. This speech is unfortunately lost.
The catalogue shows that the Duke's store had consisted mainly of the writings of the Fathers and Arabian works on science: there were a few classics, including a Quintilian, and Aristotle and Plato in Latin: the works of Capgrave and Higden were the only English chronicles; but the Duke was a devotee of the Italian learning, and his gifts to Oxford included more than one copy of the Divina Commedia, three separate copies of Boccaccio, and no less than seven of Petrarch.
We observe that the very simplicity which Quintilian sought in vain from a lifelong rhetorical training is present unsought in Frontinus; a clear proof that it is the occupation of life and the nature of the man, not the varnish of artistic culture, however elaborately laid on, that determines the main characteristics of the writer.
This was well understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero after his own time. Quintilian, speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers of philosophy, says of the latter, "Suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim sentire quæ dicit." "He was equal to the weight of the subject, for you feel that he believes what he writes."
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