Saturday, December 07, 2024
A Most Precious Darling
Charles Forster Smith, review of B.L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek. From Homer to Demosthenes. Second Part: The Doctrine of the Article (New York: The American Book Company, 1911), in
Classical Weekly 5.19 (March 16, 1912) 150-151 (at 150):
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The very morning I was to put in order some notes on this book, the post brought a letter from a former pupil, now at Oxford, from which a quotation is here made. "When in Germany I met a Bonn student who told me a remarkable story about his Greek professor. One day in the Seminar the professor said he had just received the finest Greek grammar he had ever seen. It read like a poem and was written by a poet. He handed it around, saying it was not his usual practice to risk injury to his books by students, but he must insist that the members of the Seminar be able to say they had at least touched—Gildersleeve's Greek Grammar. The student said the professor clasped and hugged it as though it were a most precious darling (Liebling)".
