Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/56

ÆT. 19] a coarseness of manners and morals distasteful and distressing in the highest degree to a boy whose instinctive delicacy and purity of mind were untouched by any of the flaws of youth. Of the average college lecture some notion may be formed from a letter written early in 1854 by one of Morris's intimate friends, who shared many of his tastes.

"As for lectures, I have long since ceased to hope that I should learn anything at them which I did not know before. Imagine yourself ushered into a large room comfortably provided with chairs and a large centre table. The men take their places round it, and the lecturer, looking up from his easy chair by the fireside, exclaims, 'Will you go on, Mr. ?' The approved crib version is then faithfully given, and meanwhile most other men are getting, by heart or otherwise, Bonn's translation of the next piece. When No. 1 has concluded, the lecturer asks benignly, 'Dum governs two moods, doesn't it?' 'Yes.' 'It governs the subjunctive sometimes, doesn't it?' 'Yes.' 'Is qui ever used with the subjunctive? It is, isn't it?' 'Yes.' 'Very well, very well, Mr. . Will you go on, Mr. ?' 'Haven't read it.' 'Oh, never mind then; you go on, Mr., will you?' and when the crib has been deposited in the hands of a neighbour, in order that any requisite emendations may be whispered into the man's ear, the lecture proceeds. At some awful blunder, up jumps the lecturer, and after a long yawning pause, mildly breaks forth, 'Well, yer know, I should hardly think you'd take it in that way, yer know. Mr., will you just translate that passage?' (Another crib version is given.) 'Precisely so, precisely so; quite right, quite right, Mr. .' And so we gradually limp through a page or two which none of the men has bestowed ten minutes upon, and