Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet and classicist. He is best known for his collections of poetry, A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). His poems often feature themes of mortality, nostalgia, and rural life. Housman was also a scholar of Latin and Greek literature, and his work as a classical scholar is still highly regarded today. His scholarship greatly contributed to the study of ancient texts, particularly the works of Manilius, Lucan, and Juvenal.