witness the increase of Vivian's popularity. Although more deficient
than most of his own age in accurate classical attainments, he found
himself, in talents and various acquirements, immeasurably their
superior. And singular is it that at school distinction in such points
is ten thousand times more admired by the multitude than the most
profound knowledge of Greek Metres, or the most accurate acquaintance
with the value of Roman coins. Vivian Grey's English verses and Vivian
Grey's English themes were the subject of universal commendation. Some
young lads made copies of these productions, to enrich, at the Christmas
holidays, their sisters' albums; while the whole school were scribbling
embryo prize-poems, epics of twenty lines on "the Ruins of Paestum" and
"the Temple of Minerva;" "Agrigentum," and "the Cascade of Terni."
Vivian's productions at this time would probably have been rejected by
the commonest twopenny publication about town, yet they turned the brain
of the whole school; while fellows who were writing Latin Dissertations
and Greek Odes, which might have made the fortune of the Classical
Journal, were looked on by the multitude as as great dunderheads as
themselves. Such is the advantage which, even in this artificial world,
everything that is genuine has over everything that is false and forced.
The dunderheads who wrote "good Latin" and "Attic Greek" did it by a
process by means of which the youngest fellow in the school was
conscious he could, if he chose, attain the same perfection. Vivian
Grey's verses were unlike anything which had yet appeared in the
literary Annals of Burnsley Vicarage, and that which was quite novel was
naturally thought quite excellent.

There is no place in the world where greater homage is paid to talent
than an English school. At a public school, indeed, if a youth of great
talents be blessed with an amiable and generous disposition, he ought
not to envy the Minister of England. If any captain of Eton or praefect