Monday, June 15, 2015
Combinations of Grammatical Smells
Basil L. Gildersleeve, review of Edwin A. Abbott, Johannine Grammar (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1906), in American Journal of Philology 27 (1906) 325-335 (at 326):
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Your sagacious grammarian is often nothing better than the hound from which he gets his complimentary epithet. Dogs have a very limited range of vision, and are haunted, not as we are, by landscapes and seascapes, but by smellscapes. Indeed, I have known scholars who thought of the classics merely as combinations of grammatical smells. The type is familiar. It is the type of Smelfungus, own brother to Dryasdust. But the sense of smell is not to be despised for all that.Related post: A Veritable Treasure-House of Grammatical Peculiarities.
