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Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War, edited by Ward W. Briggs Jr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (The Southern Texts Society), 1998. xvi, 432 pp. $47.50.
BASIL GILDERSLEEVE (1831-1924) A NATIVE OF CHARLESTON, grew up to become one of America's greatest classical scholars ("our supreme classical scholar," editor Ward Briggs calls him [p. 9]). Taught only by his father (a Presbyterian minister) until age twelve, Basil Gildersleeve read the Gospel of John in Greek at five and then entered the College of Charleston at thirteen. After his family moved to Richmond in 1845, he attended Jefferson College (Canonsburg, Pennsylvania) . Later he put in two years at Princeton and then in 1850-disgusted with the low standards at American schools-left to continue his education in Germany, "the land of scholars" (p. 354). In 1853 he received his doctorate from the University of Gottingen.
Three years later Gildersleeve accepted an appointment as Professor of Greek at the University of Virginia. After twenty years at Virginia, he moved to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he became part of "the first German-style graduate program in the United States" (p. 19). His vision and hearing failing, Gildersleeve retired from teaching in 1915, but he continued...