“Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,”

     ["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves
     readily.” ("When things have taken possession of the mind, the
     words trip.")—­Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.]

and this other.

“Ipsae res verbs rapiunt.”

     ["The things themselves force the words to express them.” 
     —­Cicero, De Finib., iii. 5.]

He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France.  He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it.  Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus.  The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer:  “As to the exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you desire:”—­[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]—­a very pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly gravelled.  And what did the other man say?  The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in three words:  “O Athenians, what this man says, I will do.”—­[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]—­ When Cicero was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many were struck with admiration; but Cato only laughed, saying, “We have a pleasant (mirth-making) consul.”  Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself.  I am none of those who think that good rhyme makes a good poem.  Let him make short long, and long short if he will, ’tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit and judgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here’s a good poet, but an ill rhymer.

“Emunctae naris, durus componere versus.”

["Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification.” 
—­Horace, Sat, iv. 8.]

Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure,