Sunday, June 13, 2021
Saying Lessons
"Sheppard Sunderland Frere, Historian and Archaeologist," Britannia 46 (2015) 1-13 (at 2, from Roger Goodburn's "A Personal Memoir"):
Newer› ‹Older
He read Classics and Ancient History at Magdalene College, Cambridge. There, the Master, A.B. Ramsay, made his scholars do 'saying lessons', i.e. learning a Greek or Latin text, adding twenty lines more each week. Even in 1935 this was considered old-fashioned, but Sheppard never regretted his learning by heart. Even though Demosthenes evaporated over the years, he could to his latter days recite long pieces of the Aeneid and the writings of Tacitus.
