Many such deceptions can be practised on men when they put faith in those who exaggerate everything they tell. Therefore I am now afraid on my own account that you who have just come to town and are about to hear me for the first time may expect to find amber and swans here, and after a while may go away laughing at the men who promised you that ‘such treasures were abundant in my discourse. But I swear that neither you nor anyone else ever heard me make such boasts about my compositions, and never will! Others, to be sure, you can find in plenty of the Eridanus kind: their words distil very gold instead of amber, and they are far more melodious than the swans of poetry. But as for my talk, you already see how simple and matter-of-fact it is, and that there is no - music to it. So look out that you do not set your hopes of me too high, and thereby have an experience like people who see things under water. They expect them to be as large as they looked through the water, from above, when the image was magnified under the light; and when they fish them up, they are annoyed to find them a great deal smaller. I warn you, therefore, at the ‘outset—don’t expect that when you have bailed out the water and exposed my thoughts you will make a great haul, or else you will have yourselves to blame for your expectations! It need hardly be said that this belongs to the domain of belles lettres, not of science. Like the Italian poets of the Renaissance, the rhetoricians of the decadence delighted to show their cunning by “praising” all manner of things good, bad, and indifferent.