Word: manilius
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Died. Alfred Edward Housman, 77, famed English poet; in Cambridge, England. Known to his University as a typical don. prim, silent, conventional, learned; to scholars for his masterly editing of minor Latin Poets (Manilius. Juvenal, Lucan) and his blasting criticisms of slipshod predecessors; he was known to the world for his two thin books of verse. A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems. Published 26 years apart, their lucid pessimism and classic simplicity made him one of the most popular, most quotable poets of modern times. A stoical poet who wrote his verse as a bitter antidote to the poison...
...world is managed, and why it was created, I cannot tell; but it is no featherbed for the repose of sluggards." More than one student of Latin verse, reading the preface to the best edition of Manilius, must have been surprised to find this sentence. Few professors of classics are capable of such utterance, but Alfred Edward Housman is no ordinary professor. British to the bone, classical to the core, in the never-numerous line of English scholar-poets he is the latest and perhaps the last. Thousands of readers know his two thin but unfragile volumes of poetry...
...reputation, but not the one he was after. While his younger brother Laurence was turning out a stream of second-rate novels and stories, A. E. Housman was making his name feared and respected among scholars as editor of Latin poets. His magnum opus, the editing of Manilius (4,258 lines) took him more than 30 years, was finally completed in 1930. As a scholar he is famed not only for his accuracy and arrogance but for his blasting criticisms of more slipshod predecessors who stood in his way; passages of his preface to Manilius are in more than...