Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 35.1 (1914) 105-114 (at 109-110):

M. MASQUERAY'S Bibliographie Pratique de la littérature grecque (Paris, Klincksieck) is intended for the use of French novices in classical philology, and must be measured by that standard; and, which is very refreshing, it is thoroughly imbued with the personality of the compiler, who is much more than a compiler. In M. MASQUERAY'S eyes 'ten verses of Sophokles are worth more than ten books of scholia, were they of Didymos or Aristarchos', and those who are acquainted with M. MASQUERAY'S special studies will understand the comparative fulness of certain sections. The tone is that of a teacher in the circle of his pupils, a paternal tone, more paternal perhaps than it would be twenty years hence, which one hopes M. MASQUERAY may be spared to see. No dry list of books is this bibliography of M. MASQUERAY's. It is full of caprices—caprices which affect sometimes the spelling and accentuation; but it is a delightful book for all that, perhaps by reason of all that, and I should be glad to surrender to it all the pages reserved for the current Brief Mention. It opens with a chapter of advice to beginners—sound advice for the latitude and longitude of Bordeaux. It enlivens the dusty way of bibliography by summaries of situations, the 'gegenwärtiger Stand' business and by criticisms of books, always brief, now caustic, now kindly, and in the main just, so far as my knowledge goes. One wishes there were more of these comments, but the author exercises his sovereign pleasure in such matters; and so from time to time he refers his pupils to the leading reviews of the work in question. But you can't count on your cicerone; and when he gets tired of all the necessary aridity of the subject, he refers the student to the Bursian-Kroll Jahresbericht or to the Berliner Wochenschrift; for whilst he puts French editions and French works of reference first, and his criticisms of French articles constitute a valuable feature of the book, the bulk of the bibliography is German. M. MASQUERAY is no chauviniste, and in fact he begins by doing homage to German erudition and German methods. 'Whoever', he says, 'wishes to study Greek antiquity seriously must know German'. 'L'allemand est la langue qu'il lui importe le plus de connaître. Il ne la saura jamais assez'. The italics are his, but there is no escaping the justice of the law thus emphatically laid down; and in like manner the first question the American teacher asks the intending philologian is, 'Do you know German?'

Masqueray is Paul Masqueray (1862-1931).