16
The same fate, it seems to me, awaits the orator who exhibits his skill amid these wondrous works of art: his praises are obscured, quite swallowed up, in the splendour of the things he praises. It is as if a man should bring a wax light to feed a mighty conflagration, or set up an ant for exhibition on a camel’s or an elephant’s back. That is one pitfall for the orator. And there is another: the distracting influence of that resonant music that echoes through the Hall, making voluminous answer to his words, nay, drowning them in the utterance; surely as trumpet quells flute, or the sea-roar the boatswain’s pipe, if he presume to contend with the crash of waves, so surely shall the orator’s puny voice be overmastered by this mighty music, and seem like silence.
