-more thoroughly, even from the standpoint of pure
technique, than any other Greek or Roman writer;--but would base
it all upon character, balance of the faculties,--in two words,
Raja-Yoga. Pliny the Younger was among his pupils, and owed much
to him; also is there to prove the value of Quintilian's
method;--for Quintilian turned out Pliny a true gentlman. Prose
in those days,--that is, rhetoric,--was tending ever more to
flamboyancy and extravagance: a current which Quintilian stood
against valiantly. We find in him, as critic, just judgment,
sane good taste, wide and generous sympathies;--a tendency to
give the utmost possible credit even where compelled in the main
to condemn;--as he was in the case of Senaca. He had the faculty
of hitting off in a phrase the whole effect of a man's style; as
when he speaks of the "milky richness of Livy," and the "immortal
swiftness of Sallust." *

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* _Encyclopaedia Britannica;_ article 'Quintilian'
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So then, to sum up a little: I think we gain from these times a
good insight into cyclic workings. First, we shall see that the
cycles are there, and operative: action and reaction regnant in
the world,--a tide in the affairs of men; and strong souls
coming in from time to time, to manipulate reactions, to turn the
currents at strategic points in time; making things, despite
what evils may be ahead, flow on to higher levels than their own
weight would carry them to: thus did Augustus and Tiberius;
--or throwing them down, as the merry Julius did, from bright
possibilities to a sad and lightless actuality. For perhaps we
have been suffering because of Julius' exploit ever since; and
certainly, no matter what Neros and Caligulas followed them, the
world was a long time the better for the ground the great first
two Principes captured from hell.--And next, we shall learn to
beware of being too exact, precise, and water-tight with out
computations and conceptions of these cycles: we shall see that
nature works in curves and delicate wave-lines, not in broken off
bits and sudden changes. Rome was going down in Tiberius' reign:
she was bad enough then, heaven knows; though we may put
her passing below the meridian at or near the end of it;--
conveniently, in the year 36. And then, what with (1) the
tenseness of the gloom and the severity of suffering in the
reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian;--and (2) the inflow of
new and cleaner blood from the provinces a