IV] HERTFORD: MY SCHOOL LIFE 51 



Mr. Crutwell was, I suppose, a fairly good classical scholar, 

 as he took the higher classes in Latin and Greek. I left 

 school too young even to begin Greek, but the last year or 

 two I was in the Latin class which was going through Virgil's 

 " ^neid " with him. The system was very bad. The eight or 

 ten boys in the class had an hour to prepare the translation, 

 and they all sat together in a group opposite each other and 

 close to Mr. Crutwell's desk, but under pretence of work there 

 were always two or three of the boys who were full of talk 

 and gossip and school stories, which kept us all employed and 

 amused till within about a quarter of an hour of the time for 

 being called up, when some one would remark, " I say, let's 

 do our translation ; I don't know a word of it." Then the 

 cleverest boy, or one who had already been through the book, 

 would begin to translate, two or three others would have their 

 dictionaries ready when he did not know the meaning of a 

 word, and so we blundered through our forty or fifty lines. 

 When we were called up, it was all a matter of chance whether 

 we got through well or otherwise. If the master was in a 

 good humour and the part we had to translate was specially 

 interesting, he would help us on wherever we hesitated or 

 blundered, and when we had got through the lesson, he would 

 make a few remarks on the subject, and say, " Now I will read 

 you the whole incident." He would then take out a trans- 

 lation of the " ^neid " in verse by a relative of his own — an 

 uncle, I think — and, beginning perhaps a page or two back, 

 read us several pages, so that we could better appreciate 

 what we had been trying to translate. I, for one, always 

 enjoyed these readings, as the verse was clear and melo- 

 dious, and gave an excellent idea of the poetry of the 

 Latin writer. Sometimes our laziness and ignorance were 

 found out, and we either had to stay in an hour and go 

 over it again, or copy it out a dozen times, or some other 

 stupid imposition. But as this only occurred now and then, 

 of course it did not in the least affect our general mode of 

 procedure when supposed to be learning our lesson. Mr. 

 Crutwell read well, with a good emphasis and intonation, 

 and I obtained a better idea of what Virgil really was from 



