The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to this school-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had missed the marked realism of Stephen’s tone in the English words, now said hesitatingly: “By the bye, Mr. Smith (I know you’ll excuse my curiosity), though your translation was unexceptionably correct and close, you have a way of pronouncing your Latin which to me seems most peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much importance; yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to my ears. I thought first that you had acquired your way of breathing the vowels from some of the northern colleges; but it cannot be so with the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if your instructor in the classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man?”
“Yes; he was an Oxford man—Fellow of St. Cyprian’s.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes; there’s no doubt about it.
“The oddest thing ever I heard of!” said Mr. Swancourt, starting with astonishment. “That the pupil of such a man——”
“The best and cleverest man in England!” cried Stephen enthusiastically.
“That the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you pronounce it beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you?”
“Four years.”
“Four years!”
“It is not so strange when I explain,” Stephen hastened to say. “It was done in this way—by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a week, and twice a week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal notes of instruction. That is how I learnt my Latin and Greek, such as it is. He is not responsible for my scanning. He has never heard me scan a line.”