I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.

The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

C. S. Lewis, from the introduction to Athanasius, On the Incarnation.

I came across this a couple of years ago and decided to take Lewis at his word. The Renaissance clarion-call “Ad fontes!” still rings.

You know what? Lewis was right.

I have J. A. Froude’s Life of John Bunyan, and I have Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. The Froude book is dull and unfailingly complimentary about the Great English Man of Letters. It’s like Protestant hagiography. But when I read Grace Abounding? It was like Bunyan had read my diary. He broke my heart by telling me what was in it.

I have James K. A. Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine, and I have Augustine’s Confessions. I couldn’t even finish Smith; I can’t stop coming back to Augustine.

I ground my way through Mary Beard’s SPQR; I raced through Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars.

I’m still early in this, to be fair. But I’m really enjoying going back and reading these old books.