Lexiphanes (21-25)

SOPOLIS Begin now to lighten yourself. Aha! First, this “prithee,” then after it “eftsoons” has come up; then on their heels his “quoth he” and “in some wise,’ and “fair sir,” and “in sooth,’ and _ his incessant “sundry.” Make an effort, however; put your fingers down your throat. You have not yet given up “instanter” or “pandiculation” or “divagation” or “spoliation.” Many things still lurk in hiding and your inwards are full of them.[*]_ It would be better if some should take the opposite course, Anyhow, “vilipendency” will make a great racket when it comes tumbling out on the wings of the wind.

Well, this man is now purged, unless something has remained behind in his lower intestines. It is for you next, Lycinus, to take him on, mending his education and teaching him what to say.

LYCINUS That I will, Sopolis, since you have cleared the way for me, and the advice which will follow is to your address, Lexiphanes. If you really desire to be genuinely praised for style and to have a great name among the public, avoid and shun all this sort of thing. After beginning with the best poets and reading them under tutors, pass to the orators, and when you have become familiar with their diction, go over in due time to Thucydides and Plato—but only after you have first disciplined yourself thoroughly in attractive comedy and sober tragedy. When you have garnered all that is fairest from these sources, you will be a personality in letters. Before, you had unconsciously become like the images shaped for the market by the modellers of figurines, coloured with red and blue on the surface, but clay on the inside, and very fragile.

If you do this, abiding for a time the reproach of illiteracy and feeling no shame to mend your knowledge, you will address the public confidently and will not be laughed at as you are now, or talked about in an uncomplimentary manner by our best people, who dub you “the Greek” and “the Athenian” when you do not deserve to be numbered even among the most intelligible of barbarians. Before all else, however, please remember not to imitate the most worthless productions of the Sophists who lived only a little before our own time, or to go nibbling at that stuff as you do now —tread that sort of thing underfoot and copy the ancient models only. And do not let yourself be enticed by the wind-flowers of speech, but follow the custom of the athletes and habituate yourself

As for vanity, boastfulness and malice, blustering and bawling, away with them, and with girding at the works of all others and thinking that you yourself will be first if you carp at the achievements of everyone else.

Yes, and there is also this fault which you have, not a slight one, but rather the greatest possible: you do not prepare your thoughts in advance of your words and subsequently dress them out in the parts of speech, but if you find anywhere an outlandish expression or make one up yourself and think it pretty, you endeavour to fit the thought to it and think yourself damaged if you cannot stuff it in somewhere, even if it is not essential to what you are saying. For example, the other day, without even knowing what “‘scintilla” meant, you tossed it off when it had no relation at all to the subject, and the vulgar to a man were dazed when its unfamiliarity struck their ears, but the well-informed laughed, not only at you but at your admirers.

What is most ridiculous of all is that although you want to be more than Attic and have meticulously shaped your diction after the most antiquated pattern, some (or rather, most) of the expressions which you intermingle with what you say are such that even a boy just beginning school would not fail to know them. For instance, you can’t think how I prayed for the earth to swallow me as I listened to the exhibition you made of yourself when you thought that “shift’? meant a man’s garment also, and used “slatterns” of male servants when who does not know that a shift is a female