United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Bunyan's was an example of genius in a peculiar kind of the novel: as, in a very different one, was Sterne's. Defoe, possessing some of the rarest gifts of the novelist, was quite lacking in others. Richardson was not only exemplar vitiis imitabile and imitatum, but it might be doubted whether, even when not faulty, he was not more admirable than delightful.
Its peculiarities were much easier to understand, and to copy, than Cicero’s: ‘decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile;’ and thus, without any advance whatever in understanding the genius of the language, or the construction of a Latin sentence, I added to my fine words and cut-and-dried idioms, phrases smacking of Tacitus.
They misquote thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown dicta borrowed from thy works. Thou art not of their sort, or, if it be indeed thee they seek to imitate, "Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile." Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom much has been forgiven, go in peace!
In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels of a school or manner of writing, which, of all that ever existed Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten is most open to the charge of being vitiis imitabile exemplar.
Nevertheless, I would not wish to be an evil exemplar, vitiis imitabile, and I don't recommend you, dear boys, to do as I did. I have been quite abnormally fortunate. Well, we thought that we were casting the die of fate on a very subordinate matter, while, lo! it was cast for us by the Supernal Powers after a more far-reaching and over-ruling fashion.
Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile: if Shakespeare ever saw or heard these pretty lines, he should have felt the unconscious rebuke implied in such close and facile imitation of his own early elegiacs.
Word Of The Day