Horace a cool fellow. Caesar came and saw and what? Coleridge on Gibbon: Humph! For Montaigne: First Latin, then French. Brassiere told top hat what?

Disappointing one's readers: Horace, whose father had been a slave, rose high enough in the world to become part of the emperor's entourage on a well publicized trip. He found himself in the company of great men, and when he wrote about it, people expected to hear the latest. They were disappointed, however. No yokel, he told them what a tourist would see but not what they wanted to hear.

Dying for love: "The new conception of romantic love" in the 13th century produced an "intense subconscious life," says Gilbert Highet in The Classical Tradition (1949). Exhibit A is The Romance of the Rose, a 22,700-verse book with the rose at its center as an erotic symbol. The Romance portrayed "physical (male) desire combined with spiritual adoration" of the (female) beloved -- a modern, not classical concept.

It signified our new conflicted existence. Introduced it, heralded it. We of the West were thenceforward condemned to second-guessing ourselves in love. There's something to noodle here. It's true that lovelorn ancient poets like Propertius and Catullus anguished over their passion. But among us is an inward-looking impulse that compounds the problem -- one of the discontents that come with civilization, a la Freud?

Modern in its psychology, The Romance of the Rose was medieval in form, with a "shapeless garrulity," along with the spontaneity and rambling character that goes with Roman satire. It was part of Western Civilization's transition game, as the Bulls announcer might put it.

Good product: The rhetorical "tricolon," as in Caesar's "I came, I saw, I conquered," is as much an invention of Greco-Roman culture as the internal-combustion engine is of modern Western culture, says Highet. See it in Lincoln's "We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground" and Roosevelt's "one-third of a nation, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."

Aping Cicero: Gibbon's History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire is one long Ciceronic peroration, says Highet, vs. the Roman historians Livy and Tacitus, who used short sentences now and then to break the monotony, as when describing battles.

Gibbon also understated the importance of the Eastern, Constantinople-based Roman empire. Samuel Taylor Coleridge found him in general wanting in explanations. He had no philosophy, said Coleridge, between gulps of or puffs on whatever he was imbibing or smoking that led to "Kubla Khan."

The French have a way: In the 17th- and 18th-century "battle of the books" in France, the "moderns" sometimes argued that French was not only better than Latin but was the ideal language, more beautiful and expressive than any other, just as France itself was the best of nations. No wonder "chauvinism" has a French origin.

The Frenchman Montaigne was home-schooled in Latin, however, and had to learn French so he could play with the other kids when he finally went to school. French was a second language for him (don't leave home without it, they said), his first being Latin. For fun as a kid, he read Ovid's Metamorphoses, which have a fairy tale flavor, as all us Ovid-lovers know.

Cherchez le French: As to the French origin of "chauvinism," let's note in passing that Chauvin was a soldier in Napoleon's army known for his vociferous patriotism, from which a chauvin became a jingo, as in jingoism and jingoistic, from which we get the first meaning, zealous and aggressive patriotism or blind enthusiasm for military glory.

The second is what we hear more about, because of feminism and its bete noire, the beastly male pig, namely biased devotion to any group or cause. My father called a chauvinistic Irishman a professional Irishman, one who traded on being Irish, at least for conversational purposes.

When A.E. looked up: Poet-teacher A.E. Housman lectured (at Cambridge) without looking at his students. This was unconquerable shyness, bred partly of acute sensitivity. Shaving, he did well not to recall some lines of poetry, which gave him goosebumps and "turned the razor's edge," says Highet in The Classical Tradition.

One day he looked up to expound on Horace's ode, "Diffugere nives," or "Spring's Return" -- "simply as poetry," he said. His forte was line-by-line dry-as-dust dissection. This time he read with emotion, in Latin and then in his own translation. Finished, he announced that he considered the poem he just read "the most beautiful . . . in ancient literature" and promptly left the room.

"I was afraid the old fellow was going to cry," said one student.

Masterful: A Housman contemporary, Wm. Ernest Henley, in his much quoted "Invictus" (unconquered), wrote, "I thank whatever gods there be . . . for my unconquerable soul" with its stirring end, "I am the master of my fate:/ I am the captain of my soul."

One-legged from age nine thanks to diabetes but never legless thanks to the famous Dr. Lister, of Listerine fame, Henley got through a lot with that philosophy. As editor of The National Observer, he published early work by Shaw, Kipling, and others. He died at 45, in 1903, heart-broken at the death a few years earlier of his five-year-old daughter. A bully fellow.

Inescapable logic: Statues have consequences. One of the Roman poet Ovid has him standing on a book. From this many determined that he could read with his feet. Vergil could read only with his eyes, on the other hand. Ergo, Ovid knew more Latin than Vergil!

Not common anyhow: You don't know what a commonplace book is, do you? I do, having just read a review of one. It's A Gentleman Publisher's Commonplace Book, collected by publisher John G. (Jock) Murray (John Murray, 9 British pounds and a lot of pence), in the 10/11/96 (London) Times Literary Supplement.

Some samples:

"What is the difference between a snowman and a snow woman? Snow balls."

"Susan Sontag's journalism, like a diamond, will sparkle more if it is cut."

Said the brassiere to the top hat: "You go on ahead while I give these two a lift."

Walter So-and-So, showing the door to Denton So-and-So (never heard of either): "You must come again when you have less time."

The conductor Thomas Beecham: "I prefer Offenbach to Bach often."

It's all in Murray's commonplace book -- read, overheard, and otherwise picked up over time and presented in one place for delight, horror, edification, amusement.

Now do you know what a commonplace book is?