I am endeavouring to show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what they are to avoid.

The opinion of the multitude about these matters is worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot be critics of music.

'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive innocent pleasure.

This is a knowledge which goes beyond that either of the poets or of their auditors in general.

For although the poet must understand rhythm and music, he need not necessarily know whether the imitation is good or not, which was the third point required in a judge; but our chorus of elders must know all three, if they are to be the instructors of youth.
And now we will resume the original argument, which may be summed up as follows: A convivial meeting is apt to grow tumultuous as the drinking proceeds; every man becomes light-headed, and fancies that he can rule the whole world.