with reading, having already read some of
Campbell's poems and Goldsmith's Traveller for
the Matriculation Examination, and Lamb's Tales
from Shakespeare and many of Shakespeare's
plays in 1885, some of Scott's poems and novels,
some of Tennyson's and Wordsworth's poems, the
collection in the Golden Treasury and some of the
ballads in Percy's Reliques. My memory was
fairly good and I could easily remember poetry,
my taste and habits having been encouraged by
my tutor, Mr. George Tate. To him I owe much ;
he was the first to give my young mind the direc-
tion which it has followed since—the love of the
beauty of literature. His careful and precise
method was good for the groundwork, but later
I freed myself from it and my reading
became unmethodical, desultory and erratic, but
extensive—and for that reason all the more en-
joyable."
Referring to the prize distribution in 1882,
" A great event on that occasion/' he goes on to
say," was the reading of their own Arabic composi-
tions by some of the older boys. Of the younger
boys who recited English poems, perhaps I was
the youngest, and mine was a poem describing a
shipwreck. I remember to this day that it opened
with the lines :
'There was joy in the ship as she furrowed the foam
And glad hearts within her were dreaming of home/
I must have taken some pleasure and pride in
performing my part well, and evidently I had