Laudator Temporis Acti

R.G.M. Nisbet, "William Smith Watt 1913-2002," Proceedings of the British Academy 124 (2004) 358-372 (at 361):

In one respect Mods went beyond anything offered at Glasgow: the questions set on some of the prepared books dealt predominantly with textual criticism. Candidates were presented with short extracts or ‘gobbets’ from these authors, and invited to consider the various readings with arguments for and against; to conclude that the crux was insoluble and deserving of the obelus might be taken as a sign of precocious perspicacity. The direction of scholars’ studies depends on early influences more than one likes to admit, and all his life Watt was to be superb at doing gobbets, though as time went on he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods.

Id. (at 366):

...he described the Lateinische Grammatik of Hofmann and Szantyr as an exciting book...

Id. (at 371):

Few knew of his love of English as well as Latin poetry: as a young man he had learned by heart the whole of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, much of the anthology of longer poems known as The English Parnassus, and (like Macaulay) all of Paradise Lost, so that fifty years later when given a line he could continue; this was an astonishing achievement even for the days when learning poetry was thought to have more educational value than writing about it. In Latin he knew by heart all of Lucretius and Virgil and much else besides, which he could declaim with an exuberant feeling for the power of rhythm and poetic language; if delayed on a station platform on the way to one of his numerous committees he would recite silently to himself.