ABSTRACT
A classical education belongs to youth; for Richards it came after a long detour in middle age. He read the earl of Derby's verse Iliad in his boyhood and a Bohn translation "in laborious prose rather later: both no more than desultorily dipped into." 1 He learned as much Latin and Greek at Clifton as was necessary to pass an examination for Cambridge, and left the classical track for "math & sciences and English."2 The distance between him and the classics grew wider at the university. One of the peculiar characteristics of Cambridge philosophy was the separation between the ancient and modern periods. "To this day [1957] the history of philosophy begins for the student of moral science here with Descartes," wrote C. D. Broad, "whilst Greek philosophy is a branch of classical studies. There is practically no overlapping either of teachers or of students."3 Moore began undergraduate studies in classics, then turned to philosophy; he "never-so far as I know-made any reference to anything he'd learnt from Plato," said Richards. "I'd neglected Plato. Everybody I knew in Cambridge had .... They didn't seem to think he was anything but a Spartan anticipator of Mussolini." Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson was one of the few exceptions. 4
There was one more opportunity for an encounter with classics at Cambridge after 1918: collaboration with Ogden. The polymath Ogden had received a first in the classical tripos, and with his vast
knowledge of languages, classical and modern, he might have kindled Richards' interest. Only Ogden was heading in a different directic n. References to classical philosophy and criticism in their joint work are typically negative (the ancients were dogmatic; they believed in the reality of hypostatized entities; they did not distinguish betwe<~n thought and language; they clung to the one word/ one meaning habit and other "verbal superstitions"). Plato, an exception, initiated a "scientific study of Symbolism" in the Cratylus on the origin of language and the meanings of words, though he was misled by the Pythagorean "dogma" of immortal number-and name-souls, by Parmenides' "Orphic conundra" about the one and the many, and Socrates' "doctrin~" of definition by real essence. But Ogden's edition of the Cratylus remained an idea. In Principles of Literary Criticism, Richards dealt harshly with ancient critics: they offer "hints" but "no explanatiom": "neither together, nor singly, nor in any combination do they give what is required" -system. They left the "central question, What is the value of the arts ... ? almost untouched."5
