required:  seeing that it pleased my indolence to be poetical where I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this small poetaster of having “cribbed” his metrical version from some unknown collection of poems:  however, he had always to be satisfied with my assurance as to authenticity, for he was sure to be baffled in his inquiries elsewhere.

One such instance is extant as thus,—­for I kept a copy, as the assembled Charterhouse masters seemed to think it too good to be original for a small boy of twelve to thirteen.  Here then, as a specimen of one of my early bits of literature, is a genuine and unaltered poem (for any modern improvements would not be honest) in the shape of a translated Greek epigram from the Anthologia:—­

    “Not Juno’s eye of fire divine
    Can vie my Melite, with thine
      So heavenly pure and bright;
    Nor can Minerva’s hand excel
    That pretty hand I know so well,
      So small and lily-white.

    “Not Venus can such charms disclose
    As those sweet lips of blushing rose
      And ivory bosom show;
    Not Thetis’ nimble foot can tread
    More lightly o’er her coral bed
      Than thy soft foot of snow.

    “What happiness thy face bestows
    When smiling on a lover’s woes! 
      Thrice happy then is he
    Who hears thy soul-subduing song,—­
    O more than blest, to whom belong
      The charms of Melite!”

I was head of the lower school then, and I remember the father of Bernal Osborne patting my curly locks and scolding his whiskered son for letting a small boy be above him.

Much about this time, and until I left Charterhouse at sixteen, there proceeded from my pen numerous other mild rhymed pieces and sundry unsuccessful prize poems; e.g., three on Carthage, the second Temple of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, AEschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady friends, one being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G.A.S. had a musical relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following “On a shell sounding like the sea” is a fair specimen for a boy:—­

    “I remember the voice of the flood
      Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore,
    As a linnet remembers the wood
      And his warblings so joyous before.”

Of course, this class of my juvenile lyrics was holiday work, and barely worth a record, except to save a fly in amber, like this.

* * * * *