'Humdrum' reminds me of the plaint of a German usher. I cannot recall the exact words, but the following echo may serve as an illustration:In his Handbook of Latin Literature, H.J. Rose called Caesar "one of the most unsuitable authors for a beginner that could be imagined."
Humdrum, humdrum, humdrum, humdrum,But that was long before the new methods that have made Caesar as alive as he was to Cleopatra.
My heart is woe, my brain is numb,
My mental vision's choked with gum.
I never could be made to stom-
ach Caesar's Bellum Gallicum.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Caesar's Bellum Gallicum
Basil L. Gildersleeve, "An Oxford Scholar," American Journal of Philology 38 (1917) 392-410 (at 402):