I remember as a theological student going to see Sir Maurice Bowra in Oxford, when I knew I was destined to teach there. I wanted to know how to behave, what sort of teacher to be. God knows what I wanted. He asked what my main interests were. I said literature, and within literature rather Greek than Latin, though both, and rather poetry than prose, but also Greek vase-painting. It came out in a sort of stutter. 'I see,' he said. 'Pots and poetry. Like me. Pots and poetry. No way to pay and promotion. No way to pay and promotion.'Related post: The Value of Studying Greek.
"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, October 22, 2014
No Way to Pay and Promotion
Peter Levi (1931-2000), The Hill of Kronos (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981), p. 31: