On the Use of Masterpieces by Arthur Quiller-Couch

There was, as we have seen, a time in Europe, extending over many centuries, when mankind dwelt under the preoccupation of making literature, and still making more of it. The 5th century BC in Athens was such a time; and if you will you may envy, as we all admire, the men of an age when to write at all was tantamount to asserting genius; the men who, in Newman's words, "deserve to be Classics, both because of what they do and because they can do it."

If you envy -- while you envy -- at least remember that these things often paid their price; that the "Phaedo," for example, was bought for us by the death of Socrates. Pass Athens and come to Alexandria: still men are accumulating books and the material for books; threshing out the Classics into commentaries and grammars, garnering books in great libraries.