It seemed suddenly as if the world had become a gross and horrible planet. The fetters of earth were galling his limbs. He felt a sudden immense yearning for the coolness and cleanliness of stellar space. If only he could pass the rest of his life in the great square of Pegasus! . . . And he was consoled by the assurance that in heaven, at any rate, there was no marrying or giving in marriage. . . . III Next term, to his great joy, he was moved up into the Upper Fourth, and had for his form-master the gentle Mr. Leeming, a fat and cheerful cleric with clean-shaven cheeks that shone like those of a trumpet-blowing cherub. He was very shortsighted, rather lazy, and intensely grateful for the least spark of intelligence to be found in his class. Edwin soon attracted him by his history and essays. His mother had fulfilled her promise of reading _The Fortunes of Nigel_ aloud in the holidays, and, as luck would have it again, the Upper Fourth were supposed to be concentrating on the early Stuarts. To the bulk of the form the period was a vast and almost empty chamber like the big schoolroom, inhabited by one or two stiff figures, devitalised by dates—a very dreary place. But to Edwin it was crowded with the swaggerers of Alsatia, the bravoes of Whitehall, with prentices, and penniless Scotchmen, and all the rest of Scott’s gallant company. “Have any of you read _Nigel_?” Mr. Leeming asked the class. “I have, sir,” said Edwin shyly. “I have already gathered so, Ingleby. Has anybody else read it?” Silence. “I think I shall ask the head master to set it to the Middle School as a holiday task,” said Mr. Leeming. Thus narrowly did Edwin escape the disaster of having Scott spoiled for him. Mr. Leeming was the master in charge of the library, and Edwin began to spend the long winter lock-ups in this room. Most of the boys who frequented it came there for the bound volumes of the _Illustrated London News_, with their pictures of the Franco-Prussian War, Irish evictions, the launching of the _Great Eastern_, and mild excitements of that kind. Edwin found himself drawn early to the bookcase that held the poets. To his great joy he discovered that the key of his playbox fitted the case; and so he would sometimes sneak into the room at odd moments in the day and carry away with him certain slim green volumes from the top shelf. These were Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_, together with their Complete Works. He had been attracted to them in the first place by the memory of a polished urn, about as graceful in contour as a carpenter’s baluster, that stood in a neglected corner of the parish church at home. This urn was encircled by a scroll which bore these directions “O smite thy breast and drop a tear— For know thy Shenstone’s dust lies here.” A palpable falsehood; for Edwin had already discovered the tomb of the elegist in another part of the churchyard, elbowed almost into the path by that of a Victorian ironmonger.