aste of time. All that
he had ever tried to do had been so to familiarise himself with the
style, the idiosyncrasies of authors, that he might be able to
reproduce such superficial effects in his compositions, or to
disentangle a passage set for translation. He had not arrived at any
real mastery of either Greek or Latin, and it seemed to him, reflecting
on this process long afterwards, that the system had encouraged in him
a naturally faulty and dilettante bent in literature. In reading, for
instance, a dialogue of Plato, he had never cared to follow the
argument, but only to take pleasure in beautiful, isolated thoughts and
images; in reading a play of Sophocles, he had cared little about the
character-drawing or the development of the dramatic situation; he had
only striven to discover and recollect extracts of gnomic quality,
sonorous flights of rhetoric, illustrative similes.

The same tendency had affected all his own reading, which had lain
mostly in the direction of _belles-lettres_ and literary annals; and,
in the course of his official life, literature had been to him more a
beloved recreation than a matter of mental discipline. The result had
been that he found himself, in the days of his emancipation, with a
strong perception of literary quality, and a wide knowledge of poetical
and imaginative literature; he had, too, a considerable acquaintance
with the lives of authors; and this was all. He could read French with
facility, but with little appreciation of style. Both German and
Italian were practically unknown to him.

Hugh made the acquaintance, which ripened into friendship, of a young
Fellow of a neighbouring college, whose education had been conducted on
entirely different lines. This young man had been educated privately,
his health making it impossible for him to go to school. He had read
only just enough classics to enable him to pass the requisite
examinations, and he had been trained chiefly in history and modern
languages. He had taken high honours in history at Cambridge, and had
settled down as a historical lecturer. As this friendship increased,
and as Hugh saw more and more of his friend's mind, he began to realise
his own deficiencies. His friend had an extraordinary grasp of
political and social movements. He was acquainted with the progress of
philosophy and with the development of ideas. It was a brilliant,
active, well-equipped intellect, moving easily and with striking
lu