The Rhetorician’s Vade Mecum (10)

So he will talk—a conceited primitive old-world personage; for models he offers you old masters long dead and done with, and expects you to exhume rusty speeches as if they were buried treasures; you are to copy a certain cutler’s son,[*] or one who called the clerk Atrometus father[*]; he forgets that we are at peace now, with no invading Philip or hectoring Alexander to

give a temporary value to that sort of eloquence; and he has never heard of our new road to Rhetoric, short, easy, and direct, Let him not prevail with you; heed not him at all; in his charge, if you do not first break your neck, you will wear yourself into a premature old age. If you are really in love, and would enjoy Rhetoric before your prime is past, and be made much of by her, dismiss this hairy specimen of ultra-virility, and leave him to climb by himself or with what dupes he can make, panting and perspiring to his heart’s content.