whether I would or not among other boys of my own age, I sank my
recondite self deeply under the folds of my quickened senses. I became
aware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, I
judged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I shared
their own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipher
among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my
school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or
inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I
was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I
captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I
journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile
walks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathers
and all conditions of light. I saw little or nothing of my
school-fellows out of hours, and lived all my play-time, if you can so
call it, intensely alone with the people of my imagination--to whose
number I could now add gleanings from the Grammar School.

I don't claim objective reality for any of these; I am sure that they
were of my own making. Though unseen beings throng round us all,
though as a child I had been conscious of them, though I had actually
seen one, in these first school years of mine the machinery I had for
seeing the usually unseen was eclipsed; my recondite self was fast in
his _cachot_--and I didn't know that he was there! But one may imagine
fairies enough out of one's reading, and going beyond that, using it
as a spring-board, advance in the work of creation from realising to
begetting. So it was with me. The _Faerie Queen_ was as familiar as
the Latin Primer ought to have been. I had much of Mallory by heart--a
book full of magic. Forth of his pages stepped men-at-arms and damsels
the moment I was alone, and held me company for as long as I would.
The persons of Homer's music came next to them. I was Hector and held