“In fact,” he says, “by one of our wise English compromises, we still teach our so modern boys the Classics; a lesson in attention and patience, at the least. Nay! by a double compromise, with delightful physiognomic results sometimes, we teach them their pagan Latin and Greek under the shadow of medieval church-towers, amid the haunts, the traditions, and with something of the discipline, of monasticism; for which, as is noticeable, the English have never wholly lost an early inclination.... The result of our older method has had its value so far, at least, say! for the careful aesthetic observer. It is of such diagonal influences, through complication of influence, that expression comes, in life, in our culture, in the very faces of men and boys—of these boys. Nothing could better harmonise present with past than the sight of them just here, as they shout at their games, or recite their lessons, overarched by the work of medieval priors, or pass to church meekly, into the seats occupied by the young monks before them.” But there is a certain want of naturalness about the conception. The picture of James Stokes descanting to his friend on minute points of meaning in Homer, in Virgil, lacks reality. Emerald himself, after being punished by the headmaster, stands up and says, “And now, sir, that I have taken my punishment, I hope you will forgive my fault.” Not so do English boys behave! And it is just here, in these rare touches of attempted drama, that Pater’s art invariably breaks down. He was aware that his own instinct was not dramatic. He wrote (August 9, 1891) to a friend, Mr. Douglas Ainslie, thanking him for a copy of a play which Mr. Ainslie had published, saying that he would read it with interest, but adding “the dramatic form of literature is not what I usually turn to with most readiness.”