I believe, therefore, that the best I can do when the horizon looks somewhat dark not only for the particular studies which we in this society love most, but for the habits of mind which we connect with those studies,—the philosophic temper, the gentle judgment, the interest in knowledge and beauty for their own sake,—will be simply, with your assistance, to look inward and try to realize my own confession of faith. I do, as a matter of fact, feel clear that, even if knowledge of Greek, instead of leading to bishoprics, as it once did, is in future to be regarded with popular suspicion as a mark of either a reactionary or an unusually feckless temper, I am nevertheless not in the least sorry that I have spent a large part of my life in Greek studies, not in the least penitent that I have been the cause of others doing the same. That is my feeling, and there must be some base for it. There must be such a thing as religio grammatici, the special religion of a man of letters. – from “The Religion of a Man of Letters” (1918)