through time. We are neither 17 nor 70--we are 2,800 years old if we open up The Iliad, a youthful 600 if it is The Canterbury Tales.Our starting point should always be a sense of "humility"--an expectation that the author knows more than us. Yet as [Robert] Southey points out, while we "love" their "virtues," we are not afraid to "condemn" their "faults" either. This closely attentive moral intelligence contrasts with the lazy desire to find nothing but racism, misogyny or imperialism in the past.
from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'The Scholar' by Robert Southey
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