It is a commonplace frequently agreed upon by symposia of elderly stockbrokers in drearily immaculate clubs that schoolmasters are a type, a machine-made product, destitute of any save false enthusiasms, out of touch with the world around them, slaves of the groove and wholly given over to pedantry.
"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).
Pages
▼
Saturday, November 18, 2023
Schoolmasters
R.A. Knox (1888-1957), A Spiritual Aeneid (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918), p. 218: