n EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 27 



A. J. Scott was the professor of English, and I 

 attended his class, little thinking that in a few years I 

 should be his colleague in Manchester. His subject 

 for that session was Anglo-Saxon, and after explaining 

 to us the construction of the larynx he proceeded to 

 instruct us very fluently in the history of Beowulf, 

 Bede, and others, giving us some illustrations of the 

 Anglo-Saxon language. He was, however, very prosy 

 and lengthy, and the end of the session came before 

 he had finished the Anglo-Saxon period. Next year 

 the course announced was the literature of the Eliza- 

 bethan era ; this I thought would be extremely 

 interesting, and consequently I entered the class, 

 though I was much occupied with other subjects. On 

 the first day, however, Scott looked round the class 

 and said : " I see there are a number of gentlemen 

 present who did not hear my lectures last session on 

 Anglo-Saxon, and as the knowledge of this portion of 

 English literature is necessary for a proper apprecia- 

 tion of subsequent periods, I propose to devote a few 

 lectures to the study of Beowulf." I was somewhat 

 disappointed, but hoped soon to get to Elizabeth. 

 This, however, was not to be, for almost the whole 

 of the session was taken up as before with Anglo- 

 Saxon, and we only got a lecture or two on the 

 Elizabethan people. 



A more refined and charming teacher than Maiden 

 I have never met. I was, however, but a 'prentice 

 hand at Greek, and had some difficulty in following 

 the subject. Maiden would spend half an hour in 

 discussing with philological minuteness the derivation 

 and exact meaning of each word or even particle, 

 so we didn't get through so much reading of Greek 

 texts as I had hoped. 



A source of greater satisfaction to me than the 



