Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 35.1 (1914) 105-114 (at 113-114, citations added by me in square brackets):

My only fear is that attention will be called, not to the persistence of the Journal, but to the age of the Editor, and I shall be moved to protest, however ineffectually, as I protested publicly some years ago, against the opprobrious epithet of Nestor. 'To me', said I, 'Nestor is the only hateful character in the Iliad. In the Odyssey he is more tolerable. In my eyes the chief merit of Nestor is the witness he bears to the realism of Homer. The Marquis of Salisbury yawned when he delivered his first speech in Parliament. Homer must have yawned when he composed one of Nestor's long discourses. If Homer nods, it is in response to the nid-nod-nodding of Nestor. If Homer is a bore, it is when he tells us how Nestor holds Patroklos by the antique substitute for the buttonhole until he spins out his yarn about his own youthful exploits. In vain does the son of Menoitios protest οὐχ ἕδος ἐστί [Iliad 11.648]. But the grievance of grievances is that Nestor has left a name to be fastened on every man who, to avail myself of the schoolboy's translation of μετὰ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν [Iliad 1.252], has the opportunity of making an ass of himself in the sight of the third generation. Juvenal cites Nestor as a deterrent answer to the prayer: Da spatium vitae, multos da, Juppiter, annos [10.188]; for he survived Antilochus, he survived everybody and everything except his self-complacency.

The lamp of our youth shall be utterly out, and we shall subsist on the smell of it;
And whatever we do we shall fold our hands and suck our gums and think well of it.
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with ourselves, and that is the perfectest hell of it.

A Shakespearian reminiscence of Kipling's [The Old Men, lines 20-22]. 'Let me not live', quoth he, 'After my flame lacks oil to be the snuff Of younger spirits'. (All's Well, i.2[.301-302]). It is this self-complacency that makes Philokleon in the Wasps so loathsome as he hiccups out; The older fellow floored the younger chap— πρεσβύτερος κατέβαλε τὸν νεώτερον [Wasps 1385]. It is this self-complacency that takes away any pleasure I should have in contemplating the Teniers-like interior of the Nestorian cabin, and the portrait of fair-tress'd Hekamede, whose functions were limited to setting the table and drawing the bath and mixing the liquors of this garrulous prototype of Old King Cole, who showed his vigour by the ease with which he raised his punch-bowl. Νέστωρ δ᾿ ὁ γέρων ἀμογητὶ ἄειρεν' [Iliad 11.637]. True, this is a favorite quotation of mine, but it is not because of Homer's truth to human nature and the persistency of senile vanity, but because of the Attic article ὁ γέρων therein contained (S.C.G. 514).

S.C.G. 514 = Gildersleeve's Syntax of Classical Greek from Homer to Demosthenes, Second Part (New York: American Book Company, 1911), pp. 215-216, § 514.