If you will take this advice, put up for a little while with being called uneducated, and not be ashamed to mend your ways, you may face an audience without a tremor; you will not then be a laughing-stock any more; the cultivated will no longer exercise their irony upon you and nickname you the Hellene and the Attic just because you are less intelligible than many barbarians. But above all things, do bear in mind not to ape the worst tricks of the last generation’s professors; you are always nibbling at their wares; put your foot upon them once for all, and take the ancients for your model. And no dallying with unsubstantial flowers of speech; accustom yourself, like the athletes, to solid food. And let your devotions be paid to the Graces and to Lucidity, whom you have so neglected.
