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heom lifes wæs geswu-
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made known unto them the
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- ↑ With a Throat, i. e. Voice or Tongue. This is the very Character which Cicero, the great Roman Orator, gives of Nestor, the wisest of the Grecians; of whom he says, Ex ejus lingua melle dulcior fluebat oratio. De senectute, cap. 9. But he tells us Homer had said it before him; and you'll find he did, Iliad. i. v. 249.
τοῦ καὶ ἀπὸ γλώσσης μέλιτος γλυκίων ῥέεν αὐδή·
Whose Tongue pour'd forth a Flood
Of more than Honey sweet Discourse.Chapman's Transl.This, it seems, was the received Character of St. Gregory's Eloquence, as appears from Goscelin of Canterb. who in his Hist. Min. c. 22 styles him Mellifluus Papa Gregorius, Angl. Sacr. Part. II. p. 65. And no doubt this Author took the Notion from Paulus Diaconus, in the very words which are translated in this Homily, and which are thus in Latin: Hauriebatque sitibundo doctrinæ fluenta pectore, quæ post congruenti tempore mellito gutture eructaret. See his Life of St. Greg. in the Bened. Edit. p. 1 c. 2.