I use the Tauchnitz edition, by Dindorf, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1858. Footnote 206: This is fairly close, I think, but the two first lines, at any rate, are too perfect not to be quoted in their own tongue— Λουκιανὸς τάδ´ ἔγραφε, παλαιά τε μωρά τε εἰδῶς· μωρὰ γὰρ ἀνθρώποις καὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα σοφά, lines which grave themselves on the memory at twenty, and at fifty are only graven deeper. Footnote 207: II. 1-24. If the “How to Write History” is chiefly concerned with matter, the _Lexiphanes_[208] is, with at least equal thoroughness, devoted [Sidenote: _The_ Lexiphanes.] to words. The comedy here is of a different kind, broader, but hardly less subtle. The play on αὐχμὸς (“dry”) and νεοχμὸς (“newfangled”), the taste which Lexiphanes gives at once of his preciousness by the use of the word κυψελόβυστα (“wax-stuffed”), his superb contempt for irony,[209] with his interlocutor’s audacious punning and sham reverence, “set” the piece at once for us. The wonderful lingo which Lexiphanes proceeds to pour forth in his “Anti-symposium” is matter for another inquiry than this; but the subsequent criticism of it by Lycinus and Sopolis is quite within our competence. And there is nowhere any sounder prophylactic against one of the recurrent diseases of literature, an access of which has been on us, as it happens, for a considerable time past. There are other diseases, of course—affected archaism, affected purism, &c. But this particular one of “raising language to a higher power,” as it has been called by some of those afflicted (and pleased) with it in our days, has never been better characterised. “Before all things,” says Lycinus, “prythee remember me this, not to mimic the worst inventions of modern rhetoricians, and smack your lips over them,[210] but to trample on them, and emulate the great classical examples. Nor let the wind-flowers of speech bewitch you, but, after the manner of men in training, stick to solid food. Sacrifice first of all to the Goddess Clearness and to the Graces by whom you are quite deserted. Bid avaunt! to bombast and magniloquence, to tricks of speech. Do not turn up your nose, and strain your voice, and jeer at others, and think that carping at everybody else will put yourself in the front rank. Nay, you have another fault, not small, but perhaps your greatest, that you do not first arrange the meaning of your expressions, and then dress them up in word and phrase; but if you can pick up anywhere some outlandish locution, or invent one that seems pretty to you, you try to tack a meaning on to it, and are miserable if you cannot stuff it in somewhere, though it may have no necessary connection with what you have to say.”[211] It would be impossible to put more forcibly or better the necessary caution, the Devil’s Advocate’s plea, against the abuse and exaggeration of the doctrine of the “beautiful word.” Footnote 208: II. 144-152. Footnote 209: τὸν μὲν εἴρωνα πέδοι κατάβαλε.