Like Einstein his temperament and circumstances made him run the gauntlet of early professional woes (and indeed like Einstein, his early failures led him to work in a Patent Office). But his touch for Latin nuance is generally ranked of the highest in the annals of classical scholarship. Though I too admire his poetry, his palmary distinction lies in his uncanny, praeternatural sensitivity to textual error, to the proper fingerprint of an author's style smudged almost beyond recognition and retrieval by centuries of fumbled handling. Had he devolved that intensity of verbal focus on his poetry, he may have ranked among the major poets. He didn't, unfortunately, but we now read Propertius and many other poets with clearer penetration because he transformed his creative gift into a dazzling philological acumen for the mot juste in classical poetry.

Peter,

 

I bow to your superior knowledge of the quality of Housman's scholarship. Still, whether he was a major or a minor poet, art is long, and I wonder if in 500 years he will be remembered less for his verse (?) than his scholarship. A useless reflection.

 

Einstein, as I understand it, was initially boxed out of academe largely because he was infinitely more gifted than his teachers. Professorial mediocrities approve, recruit and promote in their own image, and, as McLuhan once said, are terrified of those reaching for outer realities. Play it safe, is the rule by thumb.

 

Charles