All the time he was seeing qualities in
his friends, ideas in literature and possibilities in life. And all
this world of imagination had, on his own theory, to be carefully
concealed from his masters. In the _Autobiography_ he describes
himself walking to school fervently reciting verses which he
afterwards repeated in class with a determined lack of expression and
woodenness of voice; but when he assumes that this is how all boys
behave, he surely attributes his own literary enthusiasms far too
widely. One would rather gather that he supposed the whole of St.
Paul's School to be in the conspiracy to conceal their love of
literature from their masters! Such of his own schoolboy papers as
can be found show an imagination rare enough at any age, and an
enthusiasm not commonly to be found among schoolboys. A very early
one, to judge by the handwriting, is on the advantages for an
historical character of having long hair, illustrated by the history
of Mary Queen of Scots and Charles the First.
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