instinctively shy of the subject, but that we were mightily ashamed
of the extent of our ignorance and uncertainty in these matters. We
evaded them elaborately with an assumption of exhaustive knowledge.

We certainly had no shyness about theology. We marked the
emancipation of our spirits from the frightful teachings that had
oppressed our boyhood, by much indulgence in blasphemous wit. We
had a secret literature of irreverent rhymes, and a secret art of
theological caricature. Britten's father had delighted his family
by reading aloud from Dr. Richard Garnett's TWILIGHT OF THE GODS,
and Britten conveyed the precious volume to me. That and the BAB
BALLADS were the inspiration of some of our earliest lucubrations.

For an imaginative boy the first experience of writing is like a
tiger's first taste of blood, and our literary flowerings led very
directly to the revival of the school magazine, which had been
comatose for some years. But there we came upon a disappointment.


8

In that revival we associated certain other of the Sixth Form boys,
and notably one for whom our enterprise was to lay the foundations
of a career that has ended in the House of Lords, Arthur Cossington,
now Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was at that time a rather heavy,
rather good-looking boy who was chiefly eminent in cricket, an
outsider even as we were and preoccupied no doubt, had we been
sufficiently detached to observe him, with private imaginings very
much of the same quality and spirit as our own. He was, we were
inclined to think, rather a sentimentalist, rather a poseur, he