LONGS AND SHORTS.
[To THE EDITOR OT TEE SPECTATOR.”]
Sin,—If you are not tired of the subject, will you not give your readers the following passage from the Aphrodisian of
the poet Antiphanes preserved for us by Athenaeus P- " A. If I want to mention a dish,' shall I say 'a dish' or a round-bellied earthen vessel formed by the potter's wheel, baked in another habitation of the same mother, which encloses the tender, new, milk-fed offspring of the flock'? B. Te Gods ! it will be my death if you do not say straight out and simply a meat dish.' A. Good. Shall I say 'a mess of goat's milk and honey from the yellow bee which has its seat on the broad foundation of the chaste virgin, daughter of Demeter, and which luxuriates in numberless folds of pie-crust' ; or, simply, ' a choose-cake' ? B. Well, I prefer 'a choose-cake.' A. What do you say to sweat-drops from the fount of Dionysus '? B. Say wine,' sans phrase. A. Or 'the dark liquor of the dews '? B. Cut it short and say ' water.'
A. Or 'air-borne, cassia-breathing fragrance' P B. Just say 'myrrh,' and don't use these long circumbendibuses. For it seems to me a silly bit of work not to say the exact word, but to go about and about."
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