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If the first end of a writer be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: multa renascentur quae nunc cecidere; cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.

Horace had said si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi; Persius distorts this into plorabit qui me volet incurvasse querela. Other expressions more remotely modelled on him are iratum Eupoliden praegrandi cum sene palles, and perhaps the very harsh use of the accusative, linguae quantum sitiat canis, "as long a tongue as a thirsty dog hangs out."

Xenophon mentions the tale of "Bacchus and Ariadne," Pantomimically played, and Martial tells us he saw the whole story of "Pasiphae," minutely represented on the stage of the Mimis, and Plautus, in his epilogue to "Casina," has "Nunc vos aequim est, manibus meritis, Meritam mercedem dare. Qui faxit, clam uxorem, ducat scortum Semper quod volet.

I don't attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, says Horace. Therefore I disdain the human race.

He falls into the way, moreover, of lamenting, as people obstinately continue to do, the "good old times," when men were better than "now," and when the reasonable delights of the garden and the fields engrossed them to the neglect of the circus and the theatres. Or, as Tremellius says, "That man will master the business, qui et colere sciet, et poterit, et volet."

The rigors of mistresses are troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired, and slothful passion: "Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem." "Contemnite, amantes: Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri."

"If you take my silence for consent to your extravagant eulogium of Horace," I said, "you are mistaken; for in my opinion the 'nec cum venari volet poemata panges', of which you think so much, is to my mind a satire devoid of delicacy." "Satire and delicacy are hard to combine."

Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habett, incerti spatium mihi finiat oevi. OVID. Met. xv. 873. Come, soon or late, death's undetermin'd day, This mortal being only can decay. WELSTED. IT seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.

If the first end of a writer be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: Multa renascentur quæ nunc cecidere; cadentque, Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.

Seneca and Quintilian are striking and favourable instances of the school door opening into the senate: "Si fortuna volet fies de rhetore consul." But nearly all the chief writers carried their declamatory principles into the serious business of life. This double aspect of their career produced two different types of talent, under one or other of which the great imperial writers may be ranged.