So they passed the matriculation test with consummate ease, and delighted the college tutor by their clear bold writing. They had not read so much as some men have before entering the University, but all their knowledge was close and firm, and staunch enough for a spring–board. And they wrote most excellent Latin prose, and Greek verse easily flowing. However, Sir Cradock was very nervous on the eve of their departure for the first term of Oxford residence, and led John Rosedew, in whose classical powers he placed the highest confidence, into his private room, and there begged him, as a real friend, tested now for forty years, to tell him bluntly whether the boys were likely to do him credit. “Donʼt spare me, John, and donʼt spare them: only let us have no disappointment about it”. “My dear fellow, my dear fellow”! cried John, tugging at his collar, as he always did when nonplussed, for fear of losing himself; “how on earth can I tell? Most likely the men know a great deal more in the University now than they did when I had lectures. Havenʼt I begged you fifty times to have down a young first–classman”? “Yes, I know you have, John. But I am not quite such a fool, nor so shamelessly ungrateful. To upset the pile of your ten years’ labour, and rebuild it upon its apex! And talk to me of young first–classmen! Why, you know as well as I do, John, that there is not one of them, however brilliant, with a tenth part of your knowledge. It could never be, any more than a young tree can carry the fruit of an old one. Why, when you took your own first–class, they could only find one man to put with you, and you have never ceased to read, read, read, ever since you left old Oriel, and chiefly in taste and philology. And such a memory as you have! John, I am ashamed of you. You want to impose upon me”. And Sir Cradock fixed the parsonʼs eyes with that keen and point–blank gaze, which was especially odious to the shy John Rosedew. “I am sure I donʼt. You cannot mean that”, he replied, rather warmly, for, like all imaginative men, when of a diffident cast, he was desperately matter–of–fact the moment his honour was played with. His friend began to smile at him, drawing up his grey moustache, and saying, “Yes, John, you are a donkey”. “I know that I am”, said John Rosedew, shutting his eyes, as he loved to do when he got on a favourite topic; “by the side of those mighty critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the Scaligers, the Casaubons, the Vossii, the Stephani,—what am I but a starving donkey, without a thistle left for him? But as regards our English critics—at least too many of them—I submit that we have been misled by the superiority of their Latin, and their more slashing style. I doubt whether any of them had a tenth part of the learning, or the sequacity of genius——” “Come, John, I canʼt stand this, you know; and the boys will be down here directly, they are so fond of brown sherry”.