Arrian, who wrote his history of Alexander when Hadrian was emperor of the Roman world, and when the spirit of declamation and dogmatism was at its full height, but who was himself, unlike the dreaming pedants of the schools, a statesman and a soldier of practical and proved ability, well rebuked the malevolent aspersions which he heard continually thrown upon the memory of the great conqueror of the East.

It is probable that he himself understood his true sphere, which was that of a literary man,an historical critic, appealing to intelligent people rather than to learned pedants in the universities.

'Inglorious or by wants inthralled, To college and old books confined, A pedant from his learning called, Dunces advanced, he's left behind.'

"Did not each poet mourn his luckless doom, Jostled by pedants out of elbow room.

As to its actual merits, Johnson's contemporaries differed widely, some proclaiming him a pompous pedant with a passion for words of six syllables and more, others delighting in those passages in which weighty meaning was illustrated with splendour and vigour.

The worst kind of Pedants among Learned Men, are such as are naturally endued with a very small Share of common Sense, and have read a great number of Books without Taste or Distinction.

The Truth of it is, the finest Writers among the Modern Italians express themselves in such a florid form of Words, and such tedious Circumlocutions, as are used by none but Pedants in our own Country; and at the same time, fill their Writings with such poor Imaginations and Conceits, as our Youths are ashamed of, before they have been Two Years at the University.

I would not exchange Kit Marlowe's "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" for all the critical commentaries of Teutonic pedants on the character and attributes of Helen of Troy as these have (to them) been revealed by archaeological investigations.

What is a greater Pedant than a meer Man of the Town?

Here again the pedants under consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel.