[6]
The reading of tragedy
also is useful, and lyric poets will provide nourishment for the mind, provided not merely the authors
be carefully selected, but also the passages from
their works which are to be read. For the Greek lyric
poets are often licentious and even in Horace there
are passages which I should be unwilling to explain
to a class. Elegiacs, however, more especially erotic
elegy, and hendecasyllables, which are merely sections
of Sotadean verse1 (concerning which latter I need
give no admonitions), should be entirely banished, if
possible; if not absolutely banished, they should be
reserved for pupils of a less impressionable age. As to
comedy, whose contribution to eloquence may be of
no small importance,
1 One form of Sotadean is ZZZ The Hendecasyllable runs ZZZ,= the Sotadean minus the first three syllables. Both metres were frequently used for indecent lampoons. For Sotades see index.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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