"Ouïle—mé—sekile rô,
Tat brinn my laddé ôme!"
"Ouïle—mé—sekile rô,
Tat brinn my laddé ôme!"
Barty also brought back with him the complete poetical works of Byron and Thomas Moore, the gift of his noble grandfather, who adored these two bards to the exclusion of all other bards that ever wrote in English. And during that year we both got to know them, possibly as well as Lord Whitby himself. Especially "Don Juan," in which we grew to be as word‑perfect as in Polyeucte, Le Misanthrope, Athalie, Philoctète, Le Lutrin, the first six books of the Æneid and the Iliad, the Ars Poetica, and the Art Poétique (Boileau).
Every line of these has gone out of my head—long ago, alas! But I could still stand a pretty severe examination in the now all‑but‑forgotten English epic—from Dan to Beersheba—I mean from "I want a hero" to "The phantom of her frolic grace, Fitz‑Fulke!"
Barty, however, remembered everything—what he ought to, and what he ought not! He had the most astounding memory: wax to receive and marble to retain; also a wonderful facility for writing verse, mostly comic, both in English and French. Greek and Latin verse were not taught us at Brossard's, for good French reasons, into which I will not enter now.
We also grew very fond of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, quite openly—and of De Musset under the rose.
"C'était dans la nuit brune
Sur le clocher jauni,
La lune,
Comme un point sur son i!"
"C'était dans la nuit brune
Sur le clocher jauni,
La lune,
Comme un point sur son i!"
(not for the young person).