A Handsome Compliment
My last exam of the semester was yesterday at three o’clock. Age of Dryden and Pope was taught by Professor McCrea, with whom I have also taken Age of Johnson, the Eighteenth Century Novel, and Advanced Exposition. On the last day of each semester, before handing out the final examinations, he has told a story about his college days, and a French teacher who excused him from an exam that he really, really didn’t want to take. Then, with no attempt at artificial suspense, Professor McCrea announces that graduating seniors are excused. The proclamation has always prompted genuine surprise: those who are excused stand up and walk out of the room in triumph; those who are not groan audibly and proceed with their tests. I have always done well on his exams, but I was woefully unprepared yesterday, so I felt relieved beyond measure to be excused. But I also felt proud, because, after four semesters with him, it was my turn.
On my way out, we shook hands. I thanked him for four wonderful courses that have really changed the way I think and write. He returned the two essays I wrote for him this semester, and at the top of one was a note that, coming from him, I take to be a great honor.
In his Life of Johnson, James Boswell describes Dr. Johnson’s encounter with George III in his library. The King approached and asked Johnson if he was writing anything new, to which Johnson replied he was not, and that he “thought he had already done his part as a writer. ‘I should have thought so too, (said the King,) if you had not written so well’”. Johnson later told Boswell that “no man could have paid a handsomer compliment…. It was decisive”.
If I live to be a hundred I will still not write as well as Samuel Johnson. Even so, I can appreciate how it feels to receive praise from someone whose opinion matters. It is humbling.
Filed under: School on December 19th, 2009 | No Comments »