NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

To a writer.Letter CCCXXXIV.To a writer.Write straight, and make the lines straight. Do not let your hand go too high or toolow. Avoid forcing the pen to travel slantwise, like Æsop’s crab. Advance straight on, as iffollowing the line of the carpenter’s rule, which always preserves exactitude and preventsany irregularity. The oblique is ungraceful. It is the straight which pleases the eye, and doesnot allow the reader’s eyes to go nodding up and down like a swing-beam. This has beenmy fate in reading your writing. As the lines lie ladderwise, I was obliged, when I had to gofrom one to another, to mount up to the end of the last: then, when no connexion was tobe found, I had to go back, and seek for the right order again, retreating and following thefurrow, 3265 like Theseus in the story following Ariadne’s thread. 3266 Write straight, anddo not confuse our mind by your slanting and irregular writing.3265 Of the use of this word to indicate the lines in mss., cf. Aristoph., Thesm. 782, and Anth., Pal. vi. 82.3266 i.e. in the Labyrinth of Crete. Ope virginea, nullis iterata priorum, Janua difficilis filo est inventa relecto.Ov., Metam. viii. 172.900