88 A. D. GODLEY 



brevity of life especially when sixth-form mas- 

 ters, themselves interested in modern research 

 and criticism, try to give their pupils some 

 idea at second hand of what is going on in the 

 intellectual firmament where professors live, 

 where they lie (or at least develop .pleasing 

 hypotheses) beside their nectar, and hurl bolts 

 at one another. 



Once you embark on that "Cretan sea" of 

 theories about Aegean civilization, or the inner 

 meaning of Horace, or the relation of Eurip- 

 ides to Athenian literary coteries, you are in 

 an atmosphere of controversial statements and 

 somewhat enterprising logic which is rather 

 too rarefied for the young. They have not 

 the means of judging between the learned: 

 the collation, the cold collation, of rival the- 

 ories is strong meat for babes. Is it even quite 

 right for young students, not yet sure of them- 

 selves in mathematics and logic, to move in a 

 world where two plus two sometimes equal 

 five (or, let us optimistically say, four and one 

 half) and knowledge advances by a bold use 

 of the petitio principii? Personally I cannot 

 but think it is rather a pity that there is a 



