30 SEPTEMBER 1989, Page 40

A medical man sent me his son to tutor. I

took him through the usual glum, pretentious, depressing classics of literature. Then the doctor stopped his son from coming. Meeting me in the street he said: 'Thanks, Professor: I'm keeping the lad at home now, I put enough incurables en route to hell without his needing the imaginary gloom and despair you literary gents wallow in.'

Lucian, XI, 401

translated by Michael Kelly