He always arrived with blustering
suddenness; he always shouted in a stentorian voice, and, when he gave
the elder boys a Latin lesson, he always appeared, probably from
indolence, a good deal behind time, but to make up, and as though there
were not a second to waste, began to hurl his questions at them the
moment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic, and was
certainly a man with a naturally warm heart. On a closer acquaintance,
he would have won much affection, for he was a clever man and a gay,
optimistic figure. As the number of his scholars was so great, he
produced more effect at a distance.
XVI.
Neither he nor any of the other masters reproduced the atmosphere of the
classical antiquity round which all the instruction of the Latin side
centred. The master who taught Greek the last few years did so, not only
with sternness, but with a distaste, in fact, a positive hatred for his
class, which was simply disgusting.
The Head, who had the gift of oratory, communicated to us some idea of
the beauty of Latin poetry, but the rest of the instruction in the dead
languages was purely grammatical, competent and conscientious though the
men who gave it might have been. Madvig's [Translator's note: Johan
Nicolai Madvig (1804-1886), a very celebrated Danish philologist, for
fifty years professor at the University of Copenhagen.
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