_File sa corde au bourreau
Qui siffle dans le preau.

[Greek:"'Anagkae!'Anagkae!'Anagkae_!"]

Yes; it was worth while having been a little French boy just for a few
years.

I especially found it so during the holidays, which I regularly spent at
Bluefriars; for there was a French circulating library in Holborn, close
by--a paradise. It was kept by a delightful old French lady who had seen
better days, and was very kind to me, and did not lend me all the books
I asked for!

Thus irresistibly beguiled by these light wizards of our degenerate age,
I dreamed away most of my school life, utterly deaf to the voices of the
older enchanters--Homer, Horace, Virgil--whom I was sent to school on
purpose to make friends with; a deafness I lived to deplore, like other
dunces, when it was too late.

* * * * *

And I was not only given to dream by day--I dreamed by night; my sleep
was full of dreams--terrible nightmares, exquisite visions, strange
scenes full of inexplicable reminiscence; all vague and incoherent, like
all men's dreams that have hitherto been; _for I had not yet learned how
to dream_.

A vast world, a dread and beautiful chaos, an ever-changing kaleidoscope
of life, too shadowy and dim to leave any lasting impression on the