The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into the sixth, as Groome did. The head master, Dr. Holden, was a very fine scholar; and it is no wonder that Groome throughout his life showed a considerable knowledge of and interest in classical literature. That he had a real insight into the structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus,’ which Mr. Maiden has been so very good as to show me—a rendering for which he got a prize. In 1869 he got prizes for classical literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin hexameters. But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over Groome’s taste, the assistant master, Mr. Sanderson, certainly exercised more, for Mr. Sanderson was an enthusiastic student of Romany. The influence of the assistant master was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford. He was ploughed for his “Smalls,” and, remaining up for part of the “Long,” he went one night to a fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present—an incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story ‘Kriegspiel.’ Groome at once struck up an acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair. It occurred also that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich School, used to go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for fishing; and this tended to focus Groome’s interest in Romany matters. At Göttingen, where he afterwards went, he found himself in a kind of Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps to Benfey’s having been a Göttingen man, Romany matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets. The period from his leaving Göttingen to his appearance in Edinburgh in 1876 as a working literary man of amazing activity, intelligence, and knowledge is the period that he spent among the gipsies. And it is this very period of wild adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to dwell upon here. But on some future occasion I hope to write something about his adventures as a Romany Rye. His first work was on the ‘Globe Encyclopædia,’ edited by Dr. John Ross. Even at that time he was very delicate and subject to long wearisome periods of illness. During his work on the ‘Globe’ he fell seriously ill in the middle of the letter _S_. Things were going very badly with him; but they would have gone much worse had it not been for the affection and generosity of his friend and colleague Prof. H. A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in time, sat up night after night in Groome’s room, writing articles on Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.