CHAPTER V.


But I ought to be hard at work preparing myself for Cambridge. The
deuce! how can I? The point in academical education on which I require
most preparation is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, one
might think, was at home enough in this. But rare indeed it is to find
a great scholar who is a good teacher.

My dear father, if one is content to take you in your own way, there
never was a more admirable instructor for the heart, the head, the
principles, or the taste,--when you have discovered that there is some
one sore to be healed, one defect to be repaired; and you have rubbed
your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into that recess between your
frill and your waistcoat. But to go to you cut and dry, monotonously,
regularly, book and exercise in hand; to see the mournful patience with
which you tear yourself from that great volume of Cardan in the very
honeymoon of possession; and then to note those mild eyebrows gradually
distend themselves into perplexed diagonals over some false quantity or
some barbarous collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce!
which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was
a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!--no, I
would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than
light my rushlight at the lamp of that Phlegethonian Papce!

And then my father would wisely and kindly, but wondrous slowly, erase
three fourths of one's pet verses, and intercalate others that one saw
were exquisite, but could not exactly see why. And then one asked why;
and my father shook his head in despair, and said, "But you ought to
feel why!"