"For there," says he, "you will learn everything of importance that is contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two such tedious books." Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman that all the knowledge to which he attached so much value was useful only as it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be as worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria, or the vocabulary of Otaheite.
Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to verbal criticism few have been successful.

The ancient languages have, generally, a magical influence on their faculties.

They were "fools called into a circle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and Aeneid were to them not books but curiosities, or rather reliques.

They no more admired those works for their merits than a good Catholic venerates the house of the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture.

Whatever was classical was good.