XI. CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR 201

verbs.¹ My mathematics progressed well under another tutor whom I liked, Mr. Hill;² the natural instinct in me for pure geometry being keen, and my grasp of it, as far as I had gone, thorough. At my “little go”³ in the spring of ‘38, the diagrams of Euclid being given me, as was customary with the Euclid examination paper, I handed the book back to the examiner, saying scornfully, “I don’t want any figures, Sir.” “You had better take them,” replied he, mildly; which I did, as he bid me; but I could then, and can still, dictate blindfold the demonstration of any problem, with any letters, at any of its points. I just scraped through, and no more, with my Latin writing, came creditably off with what else had to be done, and my tutor was satisfied with me,-not enough recognizing that the “little go” had asked, and got out of me, pretty nearly all I had in me, or was ever likely to have in that kind.

229. It was extremely unfortunate for me that the two higher lecturers of the college, Kynaston (afterwards Master of St. Paul’s)⁴ in Greek, and Hussey,⁵ the censor, in I don’t recollect what of disagreeable, were both to my own feeling repellent. They both despised me, as a home-boy, to begin with; Kynaston with justice, for I had not Greek enough to understand anything he said; and when good-naturedly one day, in order to bring out as best he might my supposed peculiar genius and acquirements, he put me on at the ora de triglufwn, opoi kenon demaV kaqeinai, of the Iphigenia

¹ [The MS. adds:-

“Singularly, neither he nor any other person ever explained to me the meaning of the word ‘aorist,’ and I never thought of it myself till I was forty.”]

² [The Rev. Edward Hill; student of Christ Church, 1827-1850; Hon. Canon of St. Albans.]

³ [The examination now known at Oxford as “Smalls” or “Responsions,” the term “little go” being in more recent slang confined to the corresponding examination at Cambridge.]

⁴ [Herbert Kynaston (1809-1878); tutor and Greek reader at Christ Church, 1836; D. D. 1849; high-master of St. Paul’s School, 1838-1876.]

⁵ [Robert Hussey (1801-1856); censor of Christ Church, 1835-1842; Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 1842-1856.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]