ich (your examiners won't ask you
this so you needn't take notes) was a sort of God-forsaken nigger
Manchester. Regulus was not thinking about his own life. He was telling
Rome the truth. He was playing for his side. Those lines from the
eighteenth to the fortieth ought to be written in blood. Yet there are
things in human garments which will tell you that Horace was a
flaneur--a man about town. Avoid such beings. Horace knew a very great
deal. _He_ knew! _Erit ille fortis_--"will he be brave who once to
faithless foes has knelt?" And again (stop pawing with your hooves,
Thornton!) _hic unde vitam sumeret inscius_. That means roughly--but I
perceive I am ahead of my translators. Begin at _hic unde_, Vernon, and
let us see if you have the spirit of Regulus.'

Now no one expected fireworks from gentle Paddy Vernon, sub-prefect of
Hartopp's House, but, as must often be the case with growing boys, his
mind was in abeyance for the time being, and he said, all in a rush, on
behalf of Regulus: '_O magna Carthago probrosis altior Italiae ruinis_,
O Carthage, thou wilt stand forth higher than the ruins of Italy.'

Even Beetle, most lenient of critics, was interested at this point,
though he did not join the half-groan of reprobation from the wiser
heads of the Form.

'_Please_ don't mind me,' said King, and Vernon very kindly did not. He
ploughed on thus: 'He (Regulus) is related to have removed from himself
the kiss of the shameful wife and of his small children as less by the
head, and, being stern, to have placed his virile visage on the ground.'

Since King loved 'virile' about as much as he did 'spouse' or 'forsooth'
the Form looked up hopefully. But Jove thundered not.

'Until,' Vernon continued, 'he should have confirmed the sliding fathers
as being the author of counsel never given under an alias.'

He stopped, conscious of stillness round him like the dread calm of the
typhoon's centre. King's opening voice was sweeter than honey.

'I am painfully aware by bitter experience that I cannot give you any
idea of the passion, the power, the--the essential guts of the lines
which you have so foully outraged in our presence. But--' the note
changed, 'so far as in me lies, I will strive to bring home to you,
Vernon, the fact that there exist in Latin a few pitiful rules of
grammar, of syntax, nay, even of declension, which were not created for
your incult sport--your Boeotian diversion. You will, therefore, Vernon,
write