SIE, - I was seven years at Clifton under the present Bishop
of Hereford. I loathed French, German, and English history. Dr. Percival once lent me his own "Tennyson." My thanks were so tepid that he said in a disappointed tone : "I thought you would have cared for poetry." No; not even a course of lectures on Milton given by Thomas Edward Brown
(" T. E. B." of "Fo'c's'le Yarns "); which the Classical Sixth were once privileged to attend, appealed in the least to me then. But I loved Latin prose, and the Greek of Plato and Sophocles simply made my mouth water. What has been the caused or uncaused upshot of this ? At Oxford I began to read Tennyson, loved, worshipped him. I read widely and deeply for the History School without one dull or weary moment. And now my recreation as a clergyman is the philological study of French and German. I read practically no classics after I left Clifton for Oxford. So much for facts, not infer-
ences. Quorsura ltaec pertinent am, Sir, &c., X.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Previous page
