His work was just barely passing by academic standards at this time, but this wasn't because he wasn't working or thinking. He was thinking too hard, and the harder you think in this high country of the mind the slower you go. Phaedrus read in a scientific way rather than a literary way, testing each sentence as he went along, noting doubts and questions to be resolved later, and I'm fortunate in having a whole trunkful of volumes of these notations