"I work better here...Hogarth, you inspirit me".

"Is that so?"

"It is, yes. Merely your presence is for me a freshness and an
enthusiasm: I catch in the turn of your body hints of adventurous
Columbuses, Drakes, nimble Achilles; and sibylline meanings in some
glance of yours infect my fancy with images of Moses, blind old
Homers--prophet, lawgiver, poet--"

They were passing along a stretch of sand, with some lights of
Lowestoft in sight, arm in arm; and Hogarth said: "Well, you speak
some big words. But my life, you understand, has been as simple and
small as possible. I will tell you: my father sent me to an
extraordinary school--where he got the coin I could never find out--
Lancing College at Shoreham. There I did very well--only that I was
continually _getting_ it! What was the matter with me when a boy I
can't understand: I was the devil. One summer vacation (I was
fourteen) I stole three pounds from the old man, and ran away one
Sunday night. Passed through London and soon was apprentice in a
blacksmith's shop in a Kent village called Bigham. But in six months
I had the forge at my fingers' ends, and was off: nothing could hold
me long. One day I turned up before the Recruiting Office of Marines
in Bristol--just of the right age for what they call 'second-class
boys'--and decided upon the sea--that sea there--which, from the
moment I saw it at the age of four, caused me a swelling of the
breast with which, to this day, it afflicts me. Well, I got the
birth-certificate of another boy, scraped through, was entered into
a District Ship, and finally sailed in the _St. Vincent_ to the