“How goes it, Digby? What of the Homer, eh?”
“'It 's Xenophon, sir.”
“'To be sure it is. I was forgetting, as a man might who had my headache. And, by the way, Digby, why will your father give Burgundy at supper instead of Bordeaux? Some one must surely have told him accidentally it was a deadly poison, for he adheres to it with desperate fidelity.”
“I believe I know my Greek, sir,” would I say, modestly, to recall him to the theme.
“Of course you do; you'd cut a sorry figure here this morning if you did not know it. No, sir; I 'm not the man to enjoy your father's confidence, and take his money, and betray my trust His words to me were, 'Make him a gentleman, Eccles. I could find scores of fellows to cram him with Greek particles and double equations, but I want the man who can turn out the perfect article,—the gentleman.' Come now, what relations subsisted between Cyrus and Xenophon?”
“Xenophon coached him, sir.”
“So he did. Just strike a light for me. My head is splitting for want of a cigar. You may have a cigarette too. I don't object Virgil we'll keep till to-morrow. Virgil was a muff, after all. Virgil was a decentish sort of Martin Tupper, Digby. He had no wit, no repartee, no smartness; he prosed about ploughs and shepherds, like a maudlin old squire; or he told a very shady sort of anecdote about Dido, which I always doubted should be put into the hands of youth. Horace is free, too, a thought too free; but he could n't help it. Horace lived the same kind of life we do here, a species of roast-partridge and pretty woman sort of life; but then he was the gentleman always. If old Flaccus had lived now, he'd have been pretty much like Bob Eccles, and putting in his divinity lectures perhaps. By the way, I hope your father won't go and give away that small rectory in Kent. 'We who live to preach, must preach to live.' That is n't exactly the line, but it will do. Pulvis et umbra sumus, Digby; and take what care we may of ourselves, we must go back, as the judges say, to the place from whence we came. There, now, you 've had classical criticism, sound morality, worldly wisdom, and the rest of it; and, with your permission, we'll pack up the books, and stand prorogued till—let me see—Saturday next.”
Of course I moved no amendment, and went my way rejoicing.
From that hour I was free to follow my own inclinations, which usually took a horsey turn; and as the stable offered several mounts, I very often rode six hours a day. Hotham was always to be found in the pistol-gallery about four of an afternoon, and I usually joined him there, and speedily became more than his match.
“Well, youngster,” he would say, when beaten and irritable, “I can beat your head off at billiards, anyhow.”