Works of Lucian, Vol. IV: The Purist Purized

Ly. One begins to doubt, when a man has missed three.

Pur. Three? What do you mean?

Ly. A complete triolet of them.

Pur. You are certainly joking.

Ly. And you are as certainly a poor detective.

Pur. If you were to say something, one might have a chance.

Ly. Four chances you have had, and no result. It would have been a fine feather in your hat to have got them all.

Pur. Nothing fine about it; it is no more than I undertook.

Ly. Why, there you are again!

Pur. Again?

Ly. 'Feather in your hat'!

Pur. I don't know what you mean.

Ly. Precisely; you do not know. And now suppose you go first; you do not like following, that is what it is; you understand, if you chose.

Pur. Oh, I am willing enough; only you have not made any solecisms in the usual sense.

Ly. Well, you will catch me about the time that you are a sucking child again. By the way, a babe laying in his cradle would hardly jar on your notions of grammar, if you have not yet got me.

Pur. Well, I am convinced.

Ly. Now, if we cannot detect blunders like these, we are not likely to know much about our own; you see, you have just missed another. Very well now, never again call yourself competent either to detect blunders or to avoid them.

This is my blunt way, you see. Socrates of Mopsus, with whom I was acquainted in Egypt, used to put his corrections more delicately, so as not to humiliate the offender. Here are some specimens:

What time do you set out on your travels?--What time? Oh, I see, you thought I started to-day.

The patrimonial income supplies me well enough.--Patrimonial? But your father is not dead?

So-and-so is a tribes-man of mine.--Oh, you are a savage, are you?

'That's the truth of it,' said some one, 'between you and I.' Ah no, you will have to admit that you and me are wrong there.'

Another person giving a circumstantial account of a local legend said: 'So when she mingled with Heracles--' 'Without Heracles's mingling with her? '

He asked a man who told him that he must have a close crop, what his particular felony had been.

'There I quarrel,' said his opponent in an argument. 'it takes two to make a quarrel.'

A man once used the phrase, 'I was trying to save his face.' But is he in any danger of losing it?' asked Socrates.

'Chided,' said one man, 'chode,' another. He disclaimed all acquaintance with either form.

A person who volunteered 'but and if' was commended for his generosity.

Some one tried him with 'y-pleased'; 'no, no,' said he; 'that is too much of a good thing.'

'I expect him momently,' some one announced. 'A good phrase,' he said; 'so is "minutely"; we have excellent authority for "daily."'

'Look you!' said a man, meaning 'look' 'Yes, what am I to look you at?'

He took up a man who said, 'Yes, I can grapple with that,' meaning that he understood, with 'Oh, you are going to throw me, are you? how?'

'How shrill those fives are!' said some one. 'Oh, come now,' said Socrates; 'seditions and strives, but not drums and fives.'

'That man is heavily weighed,' one man observed. 'You are quite right; there is no such word as weighted.'

Pur. I am by no means so sure of that. Proceed, however.

Ly. Not sure? well, but here you have the door broad open.

Pur. Say on.

Ly. I have said.

Pur. Nothing that I observed.

Ly. What, not observed 'broad open'?

Pur. No.

Ly. Well, what is to happen, if you cannot follow now? Every man can crow on his own hay-cock, and I thought this was yours. Did you get that hay-cock? You don't seem to attend; look at the mutual help Socrates and I have just given you.

Pur. I am attending; but you are so sly with them.

Ly. Monstrous sly, is it not, to say 'mutual' instead of 'joint'? Well, that is settled up; but for your general ignorance, I defy any God short of Apollo to cure it. He gives council to all who ask it; but on you that council is thrown away.

Pur. Yes, I declare, so it was!

Ly. Well?

Pur. No; but I have heard you say that 'sit yourself ' is a barbarism.

Ly. Yes, quite so; but now I tell you that 'be seated ' is not the same as 'sit.'

Pur. Why, what may the difference be?

Ly. When a man is on his legs, you can only tell him to be seated; but if he is seated already, you can tell him to sit still

Ly. Or the only way you can learn? Well, do you know what a historian is?

(The explanation of this point appears to have dropped out of the MSS.--Translators.)

Pur. Oh, yes, I quite see, after your lucid explanation.

Ly. Now I daresay you think servility and servitude are the same; but I am aware of a considerable difference between them.

Pur. Namely--?

Ly. The first depends on yourself, the other on some one else.

Pur. Quite right.

Ly. Oh, you will pick up all sorts of information, if you give up thinking you know more than you do.

Pur. I give it up from this moment.

Ly. Then we will break off for the present, and take the rest another time.

H. & F.

Footnotes