expression in a different form.

I had begun to write, and every strong emotion was uttered in verses,
which I showed to the companions from whom I could expect sympathy. My
school-mates were very unlike. Among the young gentlemen who paid a high
price to attend the school not a single one had been really industrious
and accomplished anything. But neither did any one of the few lads whose
fathers were peasants, or who belonged to the lower ranks, stand at the
head of his class. They were very diligent, but success rarely
corresponded with the amount of labour employed. The well-educated
but by no means wealthy middle class supplied the school with its best
material.

The evolution of the human soul is a strange thing. The period during
which, in my overflowing mirth, I played all sorts of wild pranks, and at
school worked earnestly for one teacher only, often found me toiling late
at night for hours with burning head over a profound creation--I called
it The Poem of the World--in which I tried to represent the origin of
cosmic and human life.

Many other verses, from a sonnet to the beautiful ears of a pretty cousin
to the commencement of the tragedy of Panthea and Abradatus, were written
at that time; but I owe The Poem of the World special gratitude, for it
kept me from many a folly, and often held me for weeks at my desk during
the evening hours which many of my comrades spent in the tavern.
Besides, it attracted the new head-master's attention to my poetical
tastes, for a number of verses had been left by mistake in an exercise-
book. He read them, and asked to see the rest. But I could not fulfil
the wish, for they contained many things which could not fail to offend
him; so I gave him only a few of the tamest passages, and can still see