The two boys were known in the school as Boyle _A_ and Boyle _I_: Robert was Boyle _I_. According to Carew, they must have grown with astonishing rapidity during their first months at Eton. Mr. Francis was not only tall, but “very proportionable in his limbs,” and grew daily liker to his brother, Lord Dungarvan. He was not so fond of his books as “my most honoured and affectionate Mr. Robert, who was as good at his lessons as boys double his age.” An usher, “a careful man”, was helping them with their lessons, and Carew was keeping an eye on the usher. Versions and dictamens in French and Latin filled their time, and Carew could not persuade them to “affect the Irish,” though Robert seems to have shown a faint, intermittent interest in that language.[43] As for Mr. Robert, he was “very fatt, and very jovial, and pleasantly merry, and of ye rarest memory that I ever knew. He prefers Learninge afore all other virtues and pleasures. The Provost does admire him for his excellent genius.” They had acted a play in the College, and Robert had been among those chosen to take part in it. “He came uppon ye stage,” wrote Carew, exultant, to the Earl of Cork; “he had but a mute part, but for the gesture of his body and the order of his pace, he did bravely.” The little fellow was not yet nine years old, and his stutter must have made it highly desirable that the part should be “mute”; but “Mr. Provost” had already made choice of a “very sufficient man” to teach both the boys to play the viol and to sing, and also to “helpe my Master Robert’s defect in pronontiation.” Carew was afraid the study of music, which “elevats the spirits,” might hinder their more serious lessons; though up to that time the conduct of both boys had been exemplary. They had said their prayers regularly and been equally polite to everybody, and were very neat in their “aparelling, kembing, and washing.” The elder brother had been laid up with “a cowld that he tooke in the scoole,” which Carew attributed entirely to the fact that he had outgrown his clothes; and Mr. Perkins, the London tailor, had been “mighty backward” in sending their new suits. Even with a bad cold, Frank was his usual pleasant, merry self; and when Mr. Provost, according to his custom, prescribed “a little phisique,” the boy drank it cheerfully to the last drop—and “rejected it immediately after.” Sir Henry Wotton wrote himself to the Earl, describing the whole episode with an accuracy of detail worthy of Kepler’s laboratory.