Adventures among Books | Page 8

Caesar, through the
Latin and Greek grammars, through Xenophon, and the Eclogues of
Virgil, and a depressing play of Euripides, the "Phoenissae." I can
never say how much I detested these authors, who, taken in small doses,
are far, indeed, from being attractive. Horace, to a lazy boy, appears in
his Odes to have nothing to say, and to say it in the most frivolous and
vexatious manner. Then Cowper's "Task," or "Paradise Lost," as
school-books, with notes, seems arid enough to a school-boy. I
remember reading ahead, in Cowper, instead of attending to the lesson
and the class-work. His observations on public schools were not

uninteresting, but the whole English school-work of those days was
repugnant. One's English education was all got out of school.
As to Greek, for years it seemed a mere vacuous terror; one invented
for one's self all the current arguments against "compulsory Greek."
What was the use of it, who ever spoke in it, who could find any sense
in it, or any interest? A language with such cruel superfluities as a
middle voice and a dual; a language whose verbs were so fantastically
irregular, looked like a barbaric survival, a mere plague and torment.
So one thought till Homer was opened before us. Elsewhere I have tried
to describe the vivid delight of first reading Homer, delight, by the way,
which St. Augustine failed to appreciate. Most boys not wholly
immersed in dulness felt it, I think; to myself, for one, Homer was the
real beginning of study. One had tried him, when one was very young,
in Pope, and had been baffled by Pope, and his artificial manner, his
"fairs," and "swains." Homer seemed better reading in the absurd "crib"
which Mr. Buckley wrote for Bohn's series. Hector and Ajax, in that
disguise, were as great favourites as Horatius on the Bridge, or the
younger Tarquin. Scott, by the way, must have made one a furious and
consistent Legitimist. In reading the "Lays of Ancient Rome," my
sympathies were with the expelled kings, at least with him who fought
so well at Lake Regillus:-
"Titus, the youngest Tarquin, Too good for such a breed."
Where -
"Valerius struck at Titus, And lopped off half his crest; But Titus
stabbed Valerius A span deep in the breast," -
I find, on the margin of my old copy, in a schoolboy's hand, the words
"Well done, the Jacobites!" Perhaps my politics have never gone much
beyond this sentiment. But this is a digression from Homer. The very
sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll of the most various
music, was enough to win the heart, even if the words were not
understood. But the words proved unexpectedly easy to understand, full
as they are of all nobility, all tenderness, all courage, courtesy, and
romance. The "Morte d'Arthur" itself, which about this time fell into

our hands, was not so dear as the "Odyssey," though for a boy to read
Sir Thomas Malory is to ride at adventure in enchanted forests, to enter
haunted chapels where a light shines from the Graal, to find by lonely
mountain meres the magic boat of Sir Galahad.
After once being initiated into the mysteries of Greece by Homer, the
work at Greek was no longer tedious. Herodotus was a charming and
humorous story-teller, and, as for Thucydides, his account of the
Sicilian Expedition and its ending was one of the very rare things in
literature which almost, if not quite, brought tears into one's eyes. Few
passages, indeed, have done that, and they are curiously discrepant. The
first book that ever made me cry, of which feat I was horribly ashamed,
was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with the death of Eva, Topsy's friend. Then
it was trying when Colonel Newcome said Adsum, and the end of
Socrates in the Phaedo moved one more than seemed becoming--these,
and a passage in the history of Skalagrim Lamb's Tail, and, as I said,
the ruin of the Athenians in the Syracusan Bay. I have read these
chapters in an old French version derived through the Italian from a
Latin translation of Thucydides. Even in this far-descended form, the
tale keeps its pathos; the calm, grave stamp of that tragic telling cannot
be worn away by much handling, by long time, by the many changes of
human speech. "Others too," says Nicias, in that fatal speech, when -
"All was done that men may do, And all was done in vain," -
"having achieved what men may, have borne what men must." This is
the very burden of life, and the last word of tragedy. For now all is vain:
courage, wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the goodness of
Nicias, the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are expended, all wasted,
nothing of that brave