quinoctialis
Jucundis Zephyri silescit auris;
Jam mens praetrepidans avet vagari
Jam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.'

And he was about to take wing for sea-side resorts, and the soft
cyclades of the Channel, beloved by Victor Hugo.

"Right hospitable was he; a bottle of cool claret cheered the dusty
wayfarer, and an hour's pleasant talk was even more cheering. Hence I
walked through Albury Park towards Gomshall."

The exquisite bit from Catullus will best excuse my otherwise
egotistical quotation.

A few more anecdotes about literary men and things may here find place.
Take these respecting _Thackeray_, and _Leech_, both of which immortal
humorists were my schoolfellows at the Charterhouse; but, as I have
said, they having the misfortune to be merely lower-form boys, and your
present scribe ranging as a dignified Emeritus, of course there was then
a great gulf between us, pleasantly to be bridged over in after life.
Thackeray's career has long been fully detailed in public, and I can
have little to add of much consequence; but I call to mind how that
quiet small cynic--so gigantic in all senses afterwards--used to
caricature Bob Watki and the other masters on the fly-leaves of his
classbooks, to the scandal of myself and other responsible monitors;
these illustrated classics having since been sold by auction at high
prices. But "My School-Days" have recorded all that.

As to Leech, who probably adorned his books similarly, he, being a
day-boy and allowed for safety to scuttle out of the playground before
school broke up, came not equally under our surveillance in those days;
but long years after, when that genial and witty friend and true
gentleman was my guest at Albury, I had great delight in his company,
and he helped cleverly to illustrate (along with divers other artists)
my "Crock of Gold" and "Proverbial Philosophy," and in part "The
Anglo-Saxon." I remember a characteristic little anecdote about him, as
thus:--

We went angling together to Postford Pond, on a fine hot day, thinking
less of possible sport than of sandwiches and sherry, and an idle lounge
on a sloping bank in the shade, and haply (though for myself I am no
smoker) the calmly contemplative cigar. As we lay there, in
_dolce-far-niente_ fashion, all at once Leech jumped up with a vigorous
"Confound that float! can't it leave me at peace? I've been watching it
bobbing these five minutes, and now it's out of sight altogether--hang
i