Ovid (who could Read
As well as write his poems) said indeed:
Too often, when I should amend a word
I let both word and judgement go. Absurd
To own it, but the long-drawn, tedious work
Of emendation’s one I often shirk.
Creation’s easy—writing’s not a chore—
But mending what you’ve written, that’s the bore.
The greater work’s in the correction-mark,
Greater as Homer was than Aristarch.
Hornschuch, quoting Sigismund Sellius of Meiningen, quoting Ovid (found in Hornschuch’s Orthotypographia, page xv)
