I smiled and sipped my tea to acknowledge the toast, and he went on,—
“You mustn't be afraid that I 'll lean too heavily on you, Digby,—at least, at first. My system is, never make education a punishment. There's nothing that a gentleman—mind, I say a gentleman—ought to know that he cannot acquire as easily and as pleasantly as he does field-sports. If a man has to live by his wits, he must drudge; there's no help for it. And—But here come the oysters. Ain't they magnificent? Let me give you one piece of instruction while the occasion serves; let no one ever persuade you that Colchester oysters equal the Ostend. They have neither the plumpness nor the juiciness, and still less have they that fresh odor of the sea that gives such zest to appetite. One of these days I shall ask you what Horace says of oysters, and where. You never heard of Horace, eh?”
“Yes, sir; I was reading the 'Odes' when I came away.”
“And with whom, pray?”
“With mamma, sir.”
“And do you mean to say mamma knew Latin?”
“Yes, sir; she learned it to teach me. She worked far harder than I did, and I could never come up with her.”
“Ah, yes, I see; but all that sort of learning—that irregular study—is a thing to be grubbed up. If I were to be frank with you, Digby, I 'd say I 'd rather have you in total ignorance than with that smattering of knowledge a mamma's teaching is sure to imply. What had you read before Horace?”
“'Caesar's Commentaries,' sir, an 'Æneid' of Virgil, two plays of Terence—”
“Any Greek?—anything of Euripedes or Aristophanes, eh?” asked he, mockingly.