Saturday, March 03, 2018
Poor Fish with Cold Blood and Lack-Lustre Eyes
W.A. Oldfather (1880-1945), "The Dissertation,"
Classical Weekly 32.20 (April 10, 1939) 231-233 (at 231):
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What we principally need is to keep out of the profession not so much those unblessed by the laying on of philological hands, as rascals, boors and fourflushers, and especially poor fish with cold blood and lack-lustre eyes, the bespectacled, stodgy and scarified closet-pedants, able indeed through Sitzfleisch to meet the requirements for a higher degree, but who patently get no joy out of their own contact with classical culture (or out of anything else, for that matter), yet profess to interpret not merely that people whose prime need was for a world of men, but the very race of immortal children themselves! It is these pedants who drive away from the classics most of the students who are glad to be alive.
