Herodotus proved more charming than The Arabian Nights.
Thucydides showed how much wisdom may be contained in the form of history.

Froude preferred Greek to Latin, and sat up at night to read the Philoctetes, the only work of literature that ever moved him to tears.

Aeschylus divided his allegiance with Sophocles.

But the author who most completely mastered him, and whom he most completely mastered, was Pindar.

The Olympian Odes seemed to him like the Elgin Marbles in their serene and unapproachable splendour.
All this classical reading, though it cannot have been fruitless, was not done systematically for the schools.