The Corner

Re: Alcohol and Academics

Now classicists, on the other hand…

The great Richard Porson wrote of his academic travels in Europe,

’I went to Frankfort, and got drunk

With that most learn’d professor–Brunck:

I went to Worts, and got more drunken,

With that more learn’d professor Ruhncken.’

The tradition continues.  At Oxford, I once attempted to attend a lecture by a distinguished historian of Greek democracy, but the great man shuffled in to the lecture hall, wearing a voluminous gown atop his diminutive body, shirt open to the navel and sandals adorning his feet despite the cold outside, and declaimed, “It’s no good, I can’t lecture, I’m too drunk.”

I suspect he’d have liked 300, by the way.  I know I did.

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