Saturday, March 29, 2014
More Blessed to Gush Than to Construe
Robert Yelverton Tyrrell (1844-1914),"The Old School of Classics and the New. A Dialogue of the Dead. Bentley, Madvig, Porson, Shakespeare, Euripides," The Fortnightly Review, n.s. 43 (1888) 42-59 (at 48; Madvig speaking):
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But grammar, indeed, bids fair to lose her place altogether among the subjects of study; and I must be pardoned as a grammarian if I speak with some asperity of such a consummation. She is invaded on every side by archaeology, anthropology, epigraphy, and dilettantism. It is more blessed to gush than to construe.E.J. Kenney, "Bailey, David Roy Shackleton (1917–2005), classical scholar," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Like Housman he despised 'literary gush' (Selected Classical Papers, 1997, 344) and what he termed 'noörrhea', the uncontrolled flow of whatever enters the interpreter's head (ibid., 359).Related post: Gush.
