Among casualties of the war is listed compulsory Greek at Cambridge--and it is a casualty that causes grief in England. The University Senate has been empowered to remit the study in the case of men who have served six months, and it is mournfully agreed that the accidental breach in the wall can never be made quite strong again. Oxford, too, has shown signs of weakening, in spite of the presence of Murray as Regius Professor, in spite of the quatrain of a generation ago.
Her sons, oblivious of concessions weak. Undaunted guard the minimum of Greek. Flaunting in front of spurious B.A.'s Three books of Xenophon or two Greek plays.
At either university the students who, like De Quincey, enter thinking of some obscure text of the "Parmenuides," must be rare. Scholars are consoling themselves over Cambridge, if we may believe a London weekly with the thought that students are told, "If you cannot read the Iliad you can act it." The pleasure of putting this into Greek verse might have compensated Porson for the blow the step would have struck him. --The Nation (N. Y.)
Read more in News
In the Graduate Schools
