"--Cicero, "De Oratore."
{31} In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher, Historian,
and all others (bating comparison with the Divine).
{32} He is beyond the Philosopher.
{33} Horace's "Ars Poetica," lines 372-3. But Horace wrote "Non
homines, non Di"--"Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have
admitted mediocrity in poets."
{34} The moral common-places. Common Place, "Locus communis," was
a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy
sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or
adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a
text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., "Because it is
impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that
give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of
books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobaeus out of
Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled
'Polyanthea,' provides short and effective sentences apt to any
matter." Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good
quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, "a common-place,"
came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting,
and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but
commonly without wit in it.
{35} Thus far Aristotle. The whole passage in the "Poetics" runs:
"It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet
are distinguished.
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