I have got quite recently ONE pupil, tho’ not through Poynton. He is a youth of eighteen who is trying to get a Classical scholarship. I am to coach him in essay writing and English for the essay paper and general papers which these exams always include. I fear we shall win no laurels by him. I questioned him about his classical reading: our dialogue was something like this:—
SELF: ‘Well Sandeman, what Greek authors have you been reading?’
SAND (cheerfully): ‘I never can remember. Try a few names and I’ll see if I can get on to any.’
SELF (a little damped:) ‘Have you read any Euripides?’
SAND: ‘No.’
SELF: ‘Any Sophocles?’
SAND: ‘Oh yes.’
SELF: ‘What plays of his have you read?’
SAND (after a pause): ‘Well—the Alcestis.
’ SELF (apologetically): ‘But isn’t that by Euripides?’
SAND (with the genial surprise of a man who finds £1 where he thought there was a 10/-note): ‘Really. Is it now? By Jove, then I HAVE read some Euripides.’
"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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Thursday, July 23, 2026
Classical Reading
C.S. Lewis, letter to his father (November 22, 1923):