15
‘What is this you say, Eudemus? says I; 'You would exact mutation from us? are we so hard-mouthed, so untongued'? For my tongue, tis garriturient. I was just getting under way, and making ready to hail you with a fine old Attic shower. 'Tis as if a three-master were satling before the breeze, with stay-sails wind-bellied, scudding along wave-skimming, and you should throw out two-tongued anchorage and iron stoppers and ship-fetters, and block her foaming course, in envy of her fair-windedness.’ ‘Why then, if you will, splash and dash and crash through the waves; and I upsoaring, and drinking the while, will watch like Homer's Zeus from some bald-crowned bill or from Heaven-top, while you and your ship are swept along with the wind behind you.’
16
Lycinus Thanks, Lexiphanes; enough of drink and reading. I assure you I am full beyond my capacity as it is; if I do not succeed in quickly unloading my stomach of what you have put into it, there is not a doubt I shall go raving mad under the intoxication of your exuberant verbosity. At first I was inclined to be amused; but there is such a lot of it, and all just alike; I pity you now, poor misguided one, trapped in your endless maze, sick unto death, a prey to melancholia.
17
Where in the world can you have raked up all this rubbish from? How long has it taken you? Or what sort of a hive could ever keep together such a swarm of lop-sided monstrosities? Of some you are the proud creator, the rest you have dug up from dark lurking-places, till ’tis Curse on you, piling woe on mortal woe!
