As to
which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance,
that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the
former, that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be
ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the
hour. However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on
horribly quick. He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested
in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words, instead
of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and
construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them
how it should be done.
Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an
hour more, but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one after
another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and
ever more bald work of it. The poor young master is pretty near beat by
this time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his
fingers against somebody else's head. So he gives up altogether the
lower and middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the
boys on the top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can strike
a spark or two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder the most
beautiful utterances of the most beautiful woman of the old world.
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