38 KEW GARDENS 



courtly wits about him ; even in his teens 

 he corrected his Governor, Lord Bruce, on 

 a false quantity, so mortifying the noble 

 pedagogue that he gave in his resignation. 

 There is another story, perhaps recorded by 

 Signer Ben Trovato, that in the Prince's later 

 life an uncourtly Provost of Eton mentioned 

 Homer to him as "an author with whom 

 your Royal Highness is probably not much 

 acquainted," to which H.R.H. suavely replied 

 that he had forgotten a good deal of his Homer, 

 but remembered one line, and went on to quote 

 //. i. 225, which, for readers in the same case 

 as to Homer, may be rendered by Dryden's 

 version, "Dastard and drunken, mean and 

 insolent" epithets that too well fitted the 

 rebuked pedant in question. 



The Eton boys of that day, for whom the 

 summum supplidum, according to Henry Angelo's 

 Memoirs, was not over six cuts of a birch, would 

 appear to have been handled in less Spartan 

 fashion than were the King's sons in their private 

 schoolroom. The Princess Sophia told Miss 

 Amelia Murray that she had seen her eldest 

 brothers, at thirteen and fourteen, held by the 

 arms to be flogged with a long whip. But once 



