CLASSICAL EDUCATION AND WAR.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10867, 17 January 1901, Page 3

CLASSICAL EDUCATION AND WAR.

TO THE EDITOE OF THE TRESS. Sir, —I'm very glad to see the letter 01 "Hopeless in your columns to-day. He must be a real "bonse" student to score off Lis classical professor in Melbourne like that. It's a regular "classic" yarn, and no fal.'.3 modesty about it. But to quote the G:\e_c poets once more, I think we in Oxford could "yank the entire macaroon" from him even in this way. It's nothing like the way I walked over our classical prof, there. He had just been talking some tonxjny rot about Horace or Y.ir..__l or some other Greek bloke, and I thought it was about time to put the kibosh on him. He had just been gassing about Virgil's style, something about "all the music of tha ages centred in one lonely word"—at least that's as near as I can remember, and I don't take enough interest in the whole caboodle to strait down to the library and look up tho quotation. So I just st_o.l up and asked him straight out how could a Greek Jugyins like Virgil know all the music of the au-es if 112 lived bsfore the age of music 'nils and knew nothing about Tara-ra-boom-ds-av a_:cl real up to date comic songs? Well, ho listf-ned to ma quite politely till I had done, but talk about "sending mc away with a weak answer," lie had no answer at all. He just put up his eyeglasses, and be looked at mc steadily and then in a sort of thin-lipped voice, hee said, "I believe, sir, your.* name is——er Buggins?" Talk about "silent approval of the' meeting." you never heard such a ghastly hush"as fell upon that class. That was all he could say 1 I guess I scored. Of course lis knew that my name is Buggins, but I don't see what that had to do with it. I must apologise for my ''classic" style.—Yours, etc., JOE 15UGGINS.