hand with experience. [31] [32] But being now become a day-scholar at the Grammar School, and thrown whether I would or not among other boys of my own age, I sank my recondite self deeply under the folds of my quickened senses. I became aware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, I judged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I shared their own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipher among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile walks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathers and all conditions of light. I saw little or nothing of my school-fellows out of hours, and lived all my play-time, if you can so call it, intensely alone[33] with the people of my imagination—to whose number I could now add gleanings from the Grammar School. [33] I don't claim objective reality for any of these; I am sure that they were of my own making. Though unseen beings throng round us all, though as a child I had been conscious of them, though I had actually seen one, in these first school years of mine the machinery I had for seeing the usually unseen was eclipsed; my recondite self was fast in his cachot—and I didn't know that he was there! But one may imagine fairies enough out of one's reading, and going beyond that, using it as a spring-board, advance in the work of creation from realising to begetting. So it was with me. The Faerie Queen was as familiar as the Latin Primer ought to have been. I had much of Mallory by heart—a book full of magic. Forth of his pages stepped men-at-arms and damsels the moment I was alone, and held me company for as long as I would. The persons of Homer's music came next to them. I was Hector and held Andromache to my heart. I kissed her farewell when I went forth to school, and hurried home at night from the station, impatient for her arms. I was never Paris, and had only awe of Helen. Even then I dimly guessed her divinity, that godhead which the supremest beauty really is. But I was often Odys[34]seus the much-enduring, and very well acquainted with the wiles of Calypso. Next in power of enchantment came certainly Don Quixote, in whose lank bones I was often encased. Dulcinea's charm was very
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