23 APRIL 1988, Page 33

Via Classica

A coal fire blistered iron-bound desks, exploded Milk bottles wedged clandestinely beside The grate, and mottled bare legs. Masters, goaded By furies small boys know not, terrified Their charges into flawless conjugation Of verbs defective and irregular.

This was the old Black Paper education That made us grammar schoolboys what we were, Makes me here now quite able to decipher A tombstone or a motto or a verse, Which is a skill, though not a skill I'd die for.

I might have spent my adolescence worse.

At least I know, in these degenerate days, How much more so were the old Roman ways.

John Whitworth