left school. I had read a little Virgil, a little Horace, and a
book or two of Homer. I had also got through the first six books of
Euclid after a fashion, and had advanced as far as quadratic
equations in algebra, but had no mathematical talent whatever. My
mother would not hear of trade as an occupation for me, and she
could not afford to make me a soldier, sailor, doctor, lawyer, or
parson. At last the county member, at the request of her father,
obtained for me a clerkship in the Stamps and Taxes Department.
These were the days before competitive examinations. She was now
able to say that her son was in H. M. Civil Service. I had eighty
pounds a year, and lodged at Clapton with an aunt, my father's
sister.

Although I had been only half-educated, I was fond of reading, and I
had plenty of time for it. I read good books, and read them with
enthusiasm. I was much taken with the Greek dramatists, especially
with Euripides, but my only means of access to them was through
translations. My aunt had another nephew who came to see her now
and then. He had obtained an open exhibition at Oxford, and one day
I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he
needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him
a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman
about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was
derived from Potter. I did not look at a translation again for some
time.

The men at my office were a curious set. The father of one was a
leader of the lowest blackguards in a small borough, who had much to
do with determining elections there; another bore the strongest
resemblance to a well-known peer; and another was the legitimate and