The present Master of Trinity was headmaster at Harrow, while I was there. In his study one afternoon he was adjusting the accents on some of my Greek verses; and at last, pointing to a misplaced circumflex, he asked me how that could possibly go there. I answered him quite honestly that I didn’t know and didn’t care. It was rather a risky thing to say to a headmaster; but in the evening I received a parcel, and found it was Dean Stanley’s _Life of Arnold_--“C.T. from H.M.B. Harrow. Novʳ. 4. 1875.” I suppose my candour pleased him. I know he was quite snappish at my telling him that I put enclitics in for emphasis, when obviously I put them in to make my verses scan. It was in my time at Harrow that _Forty Years On_ was written and composed; and I helped to sing it at the concert on Founder’s Day, 10 October 1872, which was the first time it was sung in public. Forty years seemed a very long while then, and does not seem much now; and I see more meaning in “Shorter in wind, though in memory long, What shall it profit you that once you were strong.” * * * * * For many years I wasted time in trying to play the piano, until at last I saw that I should never play effectively, and then I gave it up. Curiously, my grandfather went through this process with the flute, though I never knew it till I found a letter of his just now:--2 April 1843, “I once had a great wish to learn the flute, and attended to it, and learnt all that was necessary, but could not make any advancement for want of an ear for it. I could play a tune by notes, but not give it that pleasing air that others could, for want of an ear. Therefore I considered it was time badly spent, and dropt it.” I think the fault was with the fingers more than with the ear. Had the ear been altogether bad, our bad playing might have pleased us. My father had no ear at all for music, yet went to Oratorios, and slept comfortably through them all, except Haydn’s _Creation_ with its disturbing bursts of sound. At the Opera he kept awake, as that was something more than music; and for some years he went pretty regularly--five-and-twenty times in the season of 1853, and so on. But he cared less for such things as the première of Berlioz’s _Benvenuto Cellini_ on 25 June 1853, than for the spectacle on 19 April 1855, when Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie came there with Queen Victoria. The best spectacle I ever saw, for opera and audience combined, was Glinka’s _Life for the Czar_ at Moscow on the Czar’s name-day, 11 September 1889.