Question

Comment on “A Grammarian’s Funeral” as an adverse commentary on Victorian ideals.

Answer 1

The grammarian’s students praise him as a paragon of scholarship and intellectual vigor, and often he is described as an admirable figure striving for lofty ideals. His complete and wholehearted absorption in his studies seems particularly inspiring when he says, “What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!/ Man has forever.” The grammarian’s life of scholarship in this light seems a noble example of the Renaissance spirit of dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, and Browning’s pinpointing of the time in which the poem is set as the beginning of the Renaissance is significant; the grammarian’s close study of Greek grammar may well have paved the way for more accessible and practical products of the renewal of classical scholarship.