2
Yet suppose I grant you that you have selected the very éditions de luxe that were prepared by Callinus or by the famous Atticus with the utmost care.Both Atticus and Callinus are mentioned again as scribes in this piece (24); Callinus is not elsewhere mentioned, but Atticus is supposed to be the “publisher” of the Atticiana, editions which had great repute in antiquity. It is hardly likely that he is Cicero’s friend. What good, you strange person, will it do you to own them, when you do not understand their beauty and will never make use of it one whit more than a blind man would enjoy beauty in favourites? To be sure you look at your books with your eyes open and quite as much as you like, and you read some of them aloud with great fluency, keeping your eyes in advance of your lips; but I do not consider that enough, unless you know the merits and defects of each passage in their contents, unless you understand what every sentence means, how to construe the words, what expressions have been accurately turned by the writer in accordance with the canon of good use, and what are false, illegitimate, and counterfeit.
