IV. UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS 83

lively boy, Willoughby Jones, afterwards Sir W., and only lately, to my sorrow, dead.

92. Finding me in all respects what boys could only look upon as an innocent, they treated me as I suppose they would have treated a girl; they neither thrashed nor chaffed me,-finding, indeed, from the first that chaff had no effect on me. Generally I did not understand it, nor in the least mind it if I did, the fountain of pure conceit in my own heart sustaining me serenely against all deprecation, whether by master or companion. I was fairly intelligent of books, had a good quick and holding memory, learned whatever I was bid as fast as I could, and as well; and since all the other boys learned always as little as they could, though I was far in retard of them in real knowledge, I almost always knew the day’s lesson best. I have already described, in the fourth chapter of Fiction, Fair and Foul,¹ Mr. Dale’s rejection of my clearly known old grammar as a “Scotch thing.” In that one action he rejected himself from being my master; and I thenceforward learned all he told me only because I had to do it.

93. While these steps were taken for my classical advancement, a master was found for me, still in that unlucky Walworth, to teach me mathematics. Mr. Rowbotham was an extremely industrious, deserving, and fairly well-informed person in his own branches, who, with his wife, and various impediments and inconveniences in the way of children, kept a “young gentleman’s Academy” near the Elephant and Castle, in one of the first houses which have black plots of grass in front, fenced by iron railings from the Walworth Road.

He knew Latin, German, and French grammar; was able to teach the “use of the globes” as far as needed in a preparatory school, and was, up to far beyond the point needed for me, a really sound mathematician. For the rest, utterly unacquainted with men or their history, with nature

¹ [In § 95: Vol. XXXIV. p. 365.]

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