The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who would never learn anything; and, as far as regarded his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not ill-founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsy interlined translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English signification scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find νεοι, _young_--σωμασιν, _bodies_--ανθρωποις τοις αγαθοις, _good men_, &c. &c.--and even in the volumes of Greek plays which he presented to the library on his departure, we observe, among other instances, the common word χρυσος provided with its English representative in the margin. But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted,[42] in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes, with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study which he caught in this way, gave to a mind like his an impulse forwards, which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to startle belief,--comprising, as it does, a range and variety of study, which might make much older "helluones librorum" hide their heads.