Note 288 — CHAPTER 1. BEFORE QUINTILIAN—CICERO, HORACE, SENECA THE ELDER, VARRO.

I had hoped that no reader would want explanation of this, but it has been hinted to me that some may. For them only, I note that the saying, the thought of which has found various and frequent expression, is slightly altered in form from Dryden, and is one of his happiest scholasticisms. It glances, utilising the old philosophical opposition-connection of γένεσις and φθορά, at the theory, put later by another person of genius more bluntly, that critics are those who “have failed in literature and art.”