only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she once had a
sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how he marched so many
parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to more than a very
unrefreshing sip of Greek. Nobody even tells the boys who Xenophon
was, what he did there, and what it was all about. Nobody gives a
brief and interesting sketch of the great march, of its history and
objects. The boys straggle along with Xenophon, knowing not whence
or whither:


"They stray through a desolate region,
And often are faint on the march."


One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against Xenophon;
they murmur against that commander; they desert his flag. They
determine that anything is better than Greek, that nothing can be
worse than Greek, and they move the tender hearts of their parents.
They are put to learn German; which they do not learn, unluckily,
but which they find it comparatively easy to shirk. In brief, they
leave school without having learned anything whatever.

Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely those
which I have described. Our grammar was not so philological,
abstruse and arid as the instruments of torture employed at present.
But I hated Greek with a deadly and sickening hatred; I hated it
like a bully and a thief of time. The verbs in [Greek text]
completed my intellectual discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with
horrible carnage. I could have run away to sea, but for a strong
impression that a life on the ocean wave "did not set my genius," as