After that first brilliant year at school, when I got so many prizes without taking any trouble, there ensued two extremely lean years, during which I took just as much trouble as before, and got nothing at all. For just as, physically, growing children spurt and are quiescent again, storing force for the next expansion, so mentally they have in the intervals of development periods of utter stagnation. I had swept, a prodigious infant, through all the other forms, leaving Geege and Davy and Daubeny mere dim fixed stars across the path of the comet, and then the unfortunate comet gave one faint “pop” and went completely out. Other boys straggled and struggled up to the first form, which I had so easily stormed, and I continued sinking through them, like a drowned rag, to my appointed place at the bottom. Agitated letters were exchanged between Waterfield and my father, of which I found the other day several of Waterfield’s; he clung to a certain forlorn optimism about me, but seemed puzzled to know why without positively neglecting my work I invariably did it worse than anybody in the form. He still believed me not to be stupid. In that quiescent period I could not assimilate any more; all that I was fed with merely gave me indigestion, and the mental stuffing was liberally supplied to the poor goose, for at the end of that year I was to try for an Eton scholarship, with regard to which my prospects grew ever less encouraging. A drawer in Waterfield’s study adjoining the room where the first class was tutored was entirely devoted to the dreadful copies of Greek and Latin prose and Latin elegiacs which I produced. Week after week these grew and collected there, each of them thickly scored by Waterfield’s red ink. Of one of them I can recall the image now; scarcely a word remained that was not underscored in red. But I gather that Waterfield must have concluded that some blight other than carelessness and inattention was responsible for my failures, for he never threatened me with rulers or birchings for them. Mentally, during those three atrocious terms, the only thing in which I can remember taking the slightest interest was hearing him read out the piece of English verse which it was our task to turn into Latin elegiacs. His reading was altogether beautiful; often his voice broke, as when he read us “Home they brought her warrior dead,” and, though he quite failed to instil in me the desire to put such verses into beautiful Latin, he intensely kindled my love of beautiful English. Similarly, when the Sunday divinity lesson was over and such storms as had raged round St. Paul’s missionary journey were stilled, he would tell us all to make ourselves comfortable, and for the rest of the hour entranced us with _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. His delightful voice melodiously rose and fell; he asked us no inconvenient questions to probe the measure of our attention; his object, in which he strikingly succeeded, was to let us hear magnificent English