[58]
It is difficult to preserve the happy mean
in carrying this precept into effect: but by a skilful
compromise it will be possible to give the impression
of speaking with care but without elaborate design.
The old rule still holds good that no unusual word,
no overbold metaphor, no phrase derived from the
lumber-rooms of antiquity or from poetic licence
should be detected in the exordium.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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