Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/89

 meaning hard to express and needing almost a midwife's aid. You have given me joy, you have overjoyed me, may you be preserved to me. In having this letter written by my secretary I have saved my fingers from a heavy task, as they are not at present to be trusted.

? 162 A.D.

to Antoninus Augustus.

1.   Neither a virgin that lisps may be chosen as a Vestal nor one that speaks indistinctly  Words descriptive of stammerers to be variously employed  the utterance of stammerers is generally described as follows: an impeded utterance, a tied utterance, a laboured, a defective, an imperfect, a discordant utterance. The contraries of these have, I doubt not, already rewarded your search: a free utterance, a distinct, an easy, a perfect, a smooth utterance. Your utterance  A survey of all the terms applied to indistinct speakers

2. The lovers of melodious utterance are said to have listened first to the birds in a shady covert. Next shepherds delighted themselves and their flocks with the newly-invented pipes. Pipes seemed far more melodious than birds they take delight by way of eloquence in the soft notes of  73