Lucian Lexiphanes 22

[22]

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.

[22]

Lycinus

I will, Sopolis; and thank you for clearing the way. Now, Lexiphanes, listen to me. If you want sincere commendations upon your style, and success with popular audiences, ' give a wide berth to that sort of stuff. Make a beginning with the great poets, read them with some one to help you, then go on to the orators, and when you have assimilated their vocabulary, proceed in due time to Thucydides and Plato, not forgetting a thorough course also of pleasant Comedy and grave Tragedy. When you have culled the best that all these can show, you may reckon that you have a style. You have not realized it, but at present you are like the toymen’s dolls, all gaudy colouring outside, and inside, fragile clay.