The Ancient Classics

Andrew Lang, "Adventures with Books":The true scholar is one whom I resent, in relation to as significantly as I high esteem him; but offering is a shade of mental short-sightedness, everywhere accents and vocal details are convoluted, which cannot be sharpened happening true accord. Yet, even for inhabitants afflicted in this way, and with the malady of existence "barren, offending scrap boys," the ancient classics fasten a attraction for which offering is no swap. Give to is a charm in way of thinking ourselves--our all-purpose planet, our puzzles, our cares, our joys, in the writings of men detached from us by burst, religion, address, and shortened the partition of former time--which no other intellectual fancy can egalitarian. So offering is to be supplementary, as the intellectual monk observed, "the fancy of despising our fellow-creatures who do not know Greek." I imagine in that offering is enhance succor.The intellectual monk was Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855). According to Hugh Lloyd-Jones, "Blood for the Ghosts" (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Seminary Move forward, 1983), p. 82, what Gaisford really supposed in a symposium was:And in conjecture, let me pull upon you the study of the ancient tongues, which not isolated refines the discern and elevates more the all-purpose herd, but in the same way leads not once in a while to positions of important balm.For an clashing view, see William Hazlitt, "On the Bear of Life; or, Directions to a School-Boy":Because, tranquil, you fasten learnt Latin and Greek, and can speak a exchange argot, do not imagine yourself of a exchange order of beings from inhabitants you as a rule converse with. They maybe know and can do enhanced "relevant" than you, although you fasten learnt a supercilious modulation of "names" to charge the precise thing by. The enhance notion trustworthy of these studies is to be "a take up for a austere and unfeeling spirit," and to ferry the compassion out of its slight and institution prejudices to the tang of a enhanced comprehensive planet. Do not imagine, in the role of you are family unit with Homer and Virgil, that your neighbours who can never bump into the precise posthumous personality are to be detested, the same inhabitants overconfident valets who settle in lady families and search down upon every one to boot. On the other hand you are master of Cicero's Orations, return it latent for a cobbler at a agenda to be enhanced crushing than you. "But you are a scholar, and he is not." Proper, also, you fasten that time improved him, but it does not search for that you are to fasten every other.As for "positions of important balm," Richard Porson thought differently. See "Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is supplementary Porsoniana" (New York, 1856), p. 300:At the fatherland of the precise gentleman I introduced Cogan to Porson, saying, "This is Mr. Cogan, who is brightly dedicated of what you fasten stalwart yourself to, -- Greek."

Porson replied, "If Mr. Cogan is brightly dedicated of Greek, he could do with be relaxed to dine on currency and cheese for the rest of his life."