And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:—
The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish that are not quite fresh.
But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology. There are passages I would not willingly let die. In one of these books general knowledge
was imparted after the manner of Magnall: ‘What is the world? The earth on which we live.’ ‘Who was Raphael?’ ‘How is rice made?’ After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question 15: ‘Give the character of Prince Potemki’:—
Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and affectedly refined. Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in action.
Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never learnt who Potemki was. At the age of seven he stood to me for what ‘Timberio’ still is for Capriote children. My teacher obviously did not know. She always evaded my inquiries by saying, ‘You will know when you are older, darling.’ Suspecting her ignorance, I became pertinacious. ‘When I am as old as you?’ was my ungallant rejoinder. I had to write the character out a hundred times. Then one Christmas Day I ventured to ask my father, who said I would find out about him in Gibbon. But I knew he was not speaking the truth, because he laughed in a nervous, peculiar way, and added that since I was so fond of
history I must go to Oxford when I was older. I loathed history, and inwardly resolved that Cambridge should be my University. My mother admitted entire ignorance of Potemki’s identity; and on my sketching his character (for I was proud of the knowledge), said he was obviously a ‘horrid’ man. His personality shadowed my childhood with a deadly fascination, which has not entirely worn away; producing the same sort of effect on me as an imaginary portrait by Pater.
In a semi-geographical work called Near Home; or, Europe Described, published by Hatchards in the fifties (though my friend, Mr. Arthur Humphreys, denies all knowledge of it), I can recall many stereos of dialectic cast in a Socratic mould:—
Q. What is the religion of the Italians? A. They are Roman Catholics.
Q. What do the Roman Catholics worship? A. Idols and a piece of bread.
Q. Would not God be very angry if He knew the Italians worshipped idols and a piece of bread? A. God IS very angry.
Mr. Augustine Birrell, if still interested in educational phenomena, will not be surprised to learn that when I reached to man’s estate I