The Army Class took Johnson off their minds. With any luck, Beetle would last King till the tea-bell. King rubbed his hands and began to carve him. He had gone to sleep to show his contempt (_a_) for Mr. King, who might or might not matter, and (_b_) for the Augustans, who, none the less, were not to be sneered at by one whose vast and omnivorous reading, for which such extraordinary facilities had been granted (this was because the Head had allowed Beetle the run of his library), naturally overlooked such _epigonoi_ as Johnson, Swift, Pope, Addison, and the like. Harrison Ainsworth and Marryat doubtless appealed---- Even so, Beetle, salt-encrusted all over except his spectacles and steeped in delicious languors, was sliding back to sleep again, when “Taffy” Howell, the leading light of the Form, who knew his Marryat as well as Stalky did his Surtees, began in his patent, noiseless whisper: “‘Allow me to observe--in the most delicate manner in the world--just to hint----’” “Under pretext of studying literature, a desultory and unformed mind would naturally return, like the dog of Scripture----” “‘You’re a damned trencher-scrapin’, napkin-carryin’, shillin’-seekin’, up-an-down-stairs &c.’” Howell breathed. Beetle choked aloud on the sudden knowledge that King was the ancient and eternal Chucks--later Count Shucksen--of _Peter Simple_. He had not realised it before. “Sorry, sir. I’m afraid I’ve been asleep, sir,” he sputtered. The shout of the Army Class diverted the storm. King was grimly glad that Beetle had condescended to honour truth so far. Perhaps he would now lend his awakened ear to a summary of the externals of Dr. Johnson, as limned by Macaulay. And he read, with intention, the just historian’s outline of a grotesque figure with untied shoe-strings, that twitched and grunted, gorged its food, bit its finger-nails, and neglected its ablutions. The Form hailed it as a speaking likeness of Beetle; nor were they corrected. Then King implored him to vouchsafe his comrades one single fact connected with Dr. Johnson which might at any time have adhered to what, for decency’s sake, must, Mr. King supposed, be called his mind. Beetle was understood to say that the only thing he could remember was in French. “You add, then, the Gallic tongue to your accomplishments? The information plus the accent? ’Tis well! Admirable Crichton, proceed!” And Beetle proceeded with the text of an old Du Maurier drawing in a back-number of _Punch_: “De tous ces défunts cockolores Le moral Fénelon, Michel Ange et Johnson (Le Docteur) sont les plus awful bores.” To which Howell, wooingly, just above his breath: “‘Oh, _won’t_ you come up, come up?’” Result, as the tea-bell rang, one hundred lines, to be shown up at seven-forty-five that evening. This was meant to blast the pleasant summer interval between tea and prep. Howell, a favourite in “English” as well as Latin, got off; but the Army Class crashed in to tea with a new Limerick.