An essay for the more idle reader

Extract

My father, like perhaps most of his generation, despised the commentary added to a text as an unnecessary aid meant for bad scholars and lazy schoolboys; and as for translations he regarded them simply as dishonest. But in these days, when classical learning has once again become a pleasure rather than a duty or a way of life, an expensive but a delightful luxury, we are no longer prepared to admit even Euripides in the rags of a bare and ill-printed text. Only the Muses of Homer and perhaps Virgil need hope for a seat on our laps by the fireside, unless they have put on all their attractive best. The rivalry of good publishing houses has made us Epicureans (or do I mean Eclectics?), whose favouritism towards this writer or that is at least in some part dependent on the charm of his commentator and the skill of his printer.