I've never read this book, so I don't know the context of this passage. But reading it in isolation, I wonder if there is more irony in it than your heading suggests.
First alert: Bohn Classics. These were (and are) notorious: these were cheap popular editions of famous books, the "Penguin Classics" of their day. But - unlike the Penguin Classics - they were (with the books originally in foreign languages, like Montaigne and Ovid) stilted, literal translations which are all but unreadable; they were also expurgated to remove sexual content. So the "eavesdropping on the past" sounds pointed: he is reading the past through the filter of these really bad editions. Hence also the "misleading severity of form and phrase" - Bohn's Ovid sounds nothing like the real Ovid.
Second alert: Niel's choice of authors: he homes in on books and authors which are notoriously racy (note that, having been advised not to read Don Juan, he goes to that first).
Third alert: when Cather says that he finds 'a little "fooling"' in Don Juan, but "none" in Tom Jones or Ovid. If "fooling" means what I think it does (I'm not sure), then it is a "tell" that the author is aware of the policy of expurgation: because Niel is reading the Bohn editions, he doesn't find the raciness that he is looking for. (If "fooling" means something different, that might not be quite as pointed - but I'd still like to know what it does mean, and why he doesn't find it in these writers - I still suspect irony here, given the authors he has chosen to read.)
Fourth alert: that this reading makes him "wish to become an architect" - in other words, a career choice that is completely unrelated to any of his reading. Doesn't this suggest a capriciousness, both about Niel, and about the way he is reading these books?
I suppose you could call this a "case for reading the great authors" - he does, after all, become obsessed with Ovid's Heroides. But it seems on the face of things a very double-edged one.
But I'd like to hear the opinion of someone who has (unlike me) actually read the book, and knows the context!!
There is indeed some context -- I did not know about the Bohn editions (thanks for that explanation!) so I missed some of the flavor on reading A Lost Lady. Still, it's very clear from his choice to read Don Juan first that Niel is interested in the "fooling".
The context ... Niel is the viewpoint character but not the protagonist. (He is fairly similar to Jim Burden from My Antonia.) The book is primarily about the title "lost lady" -- Marian Forrester. Niel admires Mrs. Forrester greatly -- a teenage crush on an older woman, you could say. And he is completely unable to realize that she is truly "lost", and that she is betraying her upright older husband with a slimy younger man. In that sense, then, Niel's view of Mrs. Forrester is similar to the expurgated Bohn editions of racier classics.
(The other context is that Mrs Forrester's betrayal of her husband -- a true "pioneer" of Nebraska and a very honest man -- by taking up with a very dishonest man, both in personal matters and business matters, is a sort of parallel to the betrayal of the values of the pioneers of the West by the exploitative businessmen and such who followed later.)
I've never read this book, so I don't know the context of this passage. But reading it in isolation, I wonder if there is more irony in it than your heading suggests.
First alert: Bohn Classics. These were (and are) notorious: these were cheap popular editions of famous books, the "Penguin Classics" of their day. But - unlike the Penguin Classics - they were (with the books originally in foreign languages, like Montaigne and Ovid) stilted, literal translations which are all but unreadable; they were also expurgated to remove sexual content. So the "eavesdropping on the past" sounds pointed: he is reading the past through the filter of these really bad editions. Hence also the "misleading severity of form and phrase" - Bohn's Ovid sounds nothing like the real Ovid.
Second alert: Niel's choice of authors: he homes in on books and authors which are notoriously racy (note that, having been advised not to read Don Juan, he goes to that first).
Third alert: when Cather says that he finds 'a little "fooling"' in Don Juan, but "none" in Tom Jones or Ovid. If "fooling" means what I think it does (I'm not sure), then it is a "tell" that the author is aware of the policy of expurgation: because Niel is reading the Bohn editions, he doesn't find the raciness that he is looking for. (If "fooling" means something different, that might not be quite as pointed - but I'd still like to know what it does mean, and why he doesn't find it in these writers - I still suspect irony here, given the authors he has chosen to read.)
Fourth alert: that this reading makes him "wish to become an architect" - in other words, a career choice that is completely unrelated to any of his reading. Doesn't this suggest a capriciousness, both about Niel, and about the way he is reading these books?
I suppose you could call this a "case for reading the great authors" - he does, after all, become obsessed with Ovid's Heroides. But it seems on the face of things a very double-edged one.
But I'd like to hear the opinion of someone who has (unlike me) actually read the book, and knows the context!!
There is indeed some context -- I did not know about the Bohn editions (thanks for that explanation!) so I missed some of the flavor on reading A Lost Lady. Still, it's very clear from his choice to read Don Juan first that Niel is interested in the "fooling".
The context ... Niel is the viewpoint character but not the protagonist. (He is fairly similar to Jim Burden from My Antonia.) The book is primarily about the title "lost lady" -- Marian Forrester. Niel admires Mrs. Forrester greatly -- a teenage crush on an older woman, you could say. And he is completely unable to realize that she is truly "lost", and that she is betraying her upright older husband with a slimy younger man. In that sense, then, Niel's view of Mrs. Forrester is similar to the expurgated Bohn editions of racier classics.
(The other context is that Mrs Forrester's betrayal of her husband -- a true "pioneer" of Nebraska and a very honest man -- by taking up with a very dishonest man, both in personal matters and business matters, is a sort of parallel to the betrayal of the values of the pioneers of the West by the exploitative businessmen and such who followed later.)
Your analysis is interesting. I haven't read the book either, although I love Cather.
I adore Cather, and I love A Lost Lady in particular. I think of it as the fourth of her Prairie Trilogy. And that is a beautiful passage.
Cather has a firm hand with words...a great passage. (And yes, like @David44, I suspect there is a fair bit of tongue-in-cheek here!)
Ironic - I just wrote something about the Great Books.
https://fitzyhistory.substack.com/p/the-last-classroom-ai-cant-touch