It is a tale of birth, death, love, hate, mating—(treated unafraidly by both the author of the book and last night’s lecturer in his polished review)—of overbearing lords, of days of early American slavery, of economic conditions of early and later America, of the simpering dames of Napoleon’s period, and the passionate women of the luxurious and seductive age of the Roman Empire.

some lost great hope unheedily, / Which never they recover might againe […].

His voice was unexcited, uneager.

He was not the pompous university president from central casting, always pontificating; he was more like a charming professor who walked around his campus wearing the navy blue cap of his beloved Boston Red Sox and who just happened to be university president.