Somewhat less distracted, and thinking that Milton might comprise part of my evening reading. The purity of his diction ameliorates concerns about how kind fate has been to Roman and Greek texts.
Unrelated, but it is curious to read (343–7) in Paradise Regained IV the Son of God saying of Greek poetry: “Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid / As varnish on a harlot’s cheek; the rest / Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, / Will far be found unworthy to compare / with Sion’s songs…” The latter a reference to the ‘scandalous’ Psalmes, or Songs of Sion by William Slatyer. Only two copies of his little volume survived an order from the Prelates for the book to be burned. The versified psalms are innocuous; it was Slatyer’s belief that they should be sung with lively and popular tunes that rendered them improper for consumption.
My attention has alighted on A. J. A. Symons’s The Quest for Corvo: “before I had turned twenty pages my curiosity deepened” and “I felt that interior stir with which we all recognise a transforming new experience.” It seems the medicine needed; not a swelling epithet to be encountered.