Note 376 — Chapter II · THE CONTEMPORARIES OF QUINTILIAN.

I am not sure that I should have given any place here to Cornelius Fronto, if his ticket of admission had not been (rather contumeliously) countersigned by Mr Nettleship. The low opinion which Marcus Aurelius seems to have had of literature may possibly have been in part excused by his preceptor’s utterances on the subject. He appears to have been an eminent representative of the “labelling” school of critics. Lucilius is “gracile” (this is not quite Horace’s view), Albucius and Pacuvius mediocre, Accius unequal, Ennius multiform. Sallust writes history structe, Pictor incondite, Claudius lepide, Antias invenuste, Sisenna longinque, Cato verbis multijugis, Cœlius singulis. One cannot help “nodding approval and saying, ‘This is very satisfactory to know,’” as Lady Kew did when she was informed that “Alfred was a trump, and Ethel a brick, and Barnes a snob.” But if Mr Nettleship thought that æsthetic, as opposed to philosophical, criticism could not get beyond this system of tickets-of-leave, he was surely mistaken.