Word: trevelyan
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...Bible and mythology are not the only things readers are ignorant about: they also know too little history and thus lose much of the meaning of what they might read. "Take," says Trevelyan, "two of the wittiest lines Pope ever wrote...
Britain's G. M. Trevelyan, famed historian son of a famed historian father, thinks the modern reader is getting less & less able to understand good writing. Last week, in a pamphlet published by the Oxford University Press, he told his countrymen why: "Literature, more than painting and music, is a matter of references, of play made with bits of knowledge common to author and reader." The trouble is, says Trevelyan, that this common knowledge is getting scantier & scantier...
Indeed, says Trevelyan, the modern reader is weak where "his grandfathers were strong-the Bible stories and the classical stories . . . Milton's words-'That twice-battered god of Palestine'-would have been understood at once by the majority of people who read books in the reign of Victoria. I fear it would be obscure to many readers of today...
...concludes Trevelyan, "history and literature have formed one study, one delight, woven together by a thousand crossing strands and threads . . . Our grandfathers were brought up on the classics and the Bible. Both were history and literature closely intertwined, and therefore formed a marvelous education, a much finer education than any which is at all usual today...
...rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge is as keen as the rivalry between Ford and Chevrolet-and a good deal older. Last week George Trevelyan, Master of Trinity College and High Steward of the Borough of Cambridge, announced that he was petitioning the Crown to change Cambridge's status from town to city. Cried one Oxonian on hearing the news: "Good gracious! In their efforts for equality, Cambridge will be wanting a bishop next." Oxford has been both bishopric and city for more than four centuries...