Yet one of them, the Trachiniae, is, to my thinking, very poor and insipid.

Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the Trachiniae,--and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those seven had been the Medea, the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis, the Orestes, the Phoenissae, the Hippolytus, and the Alcestis, I am not sure that the relative position which the two poets now hold in our estimation would not be greatly altered.
I have not done much in Latin.

I have been employed in turning over several third-rate and fourth-rate writers.

After finishing Cicero, I read through the works of both the Senecas, father and son.

There is a great deal in the Controversiae both of curious information, and of judicious criticism.