Note 568 — Chapter II · MIL-HUIT-CENT-TRENTE.

This, with Quintus Smyrnæus as make-weight, is a sort of wreckage or recovery from the lectures which were howled down at the Collége de France by anti-Imperialist students. It is the largest of its author’s classical studies: not perhaps the most interesting. The French professorial method, possibly in direct tradition from the time when authors were really (and in some cases almost merely) read to students, seems to include a very large amount of simple abstract and “argument.” (“Priam conducts the young princess to the Palace: he honours her,” &c.) This is, from our point of view, rather surplusage, and at any rate more important on Quintus Smyrnæus than on Virgil. But we may note a reference (p. 73) to Mr Arnold’s Preface, then pretty new, which is an interesting thing.