Was it conceivable that a man could spend a lifetime in an occupation of this kind?
By pursuing such studies Gildersleeve and his most advanced pupils uncovered many new facts about the language and even found hitherto unsuspected beauties; but Page's letters show that this sort of effort was extremely uncongenial.

He fulminates against the "grammarians" and begins to think that perhaps, after all, a career of erudite scholarship is not the ideal existence.

"Learn to look on me as a Greek drudge," he writes, "somewhere pounding into men and boys a faint hint of the beauty of old Greekdom.

That's most probably what I shall come to before many years.

I am sure that I have mistaken my lifework, if I consider Greek my lifework.