Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/75

 needs with the utmost care study these nice distinctions and minutiae. Some absolutely work at their words with crowbar and maul as if they were flints; others, however, grave them with burin and mallet as though they were little gems. For you it will be better, for greater deftness in searching out words, to take it to heart when corrected, than to demur or flag when detected in a fault. For if you give up searching you will never find; if you go on searching you will find.

7. Finally, you seemed even to have thought it a work of supererogation when I changed your order of a word, so that the epithet three-headed should come before the name Geryon. Bear this, too, in mind: it frequently happens that words in a speech, by a change in their order, become essential or superfluous. I should be right in speaking of a ship with three decks, but ship would be a superfluous addition to three-decker. For there is no danger of anyone thinking that by three-decker was meant a litter, a landau, or a lute. Then, again, when you were pointing out why the Parthians wore loose wide sleeves, you wrote, I think, to this effect, that the heat was suspended by the openings in the robe. Can you tell me, pray, how the heat is suspended? Not that I find fault with you for pushing out somewhat boldly in the metaphorical use of a word, for I agree with Ennius his opinion that "an orator should be bold." By all means let him be bold, as Ennius lays down, but let him in no case deviate from the meaning which he would express. So I greatly approved and applauded your intention when you 11