And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?"If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.

They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home.

And what does a person with such a romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics? He asked this as if, having had the good fortune to catch such a rare bird as myself, he was anxious to extract my opinion while I was still captive in his office.'If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective,' I said, 'I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.'He laughed. 'The great romantics are often failed classicists. But that's beside the point, isn't it?

You wan't to know what Classics are?" said a drunk Dean of Admissions to me at a faculty party a couple of years ago. "I'll tell you what Clasdics are. War and homos." A sententious and vulgar statement, certainly, but like many such gnomic vulgarities, it also contains a tiny splinter of truth.