ools, and conducted the examinations of the
Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor was the youth's
proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect,
indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when compared with even second-rate
and third-rate men from public schools. He had never, while under
Wilson's care, been in the habit of composing in the ancient languages:
and he therefore never acquired that knack of versification which is
sometimes possessed by clever boys whose knowledge of the language and
literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial. It would have been
utterly out of his power to produce such charming elegiac lines as those
in which Wellesley bade farewell to Eton, or such Virgilian hexameters
as those in which Canning described the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it may
be doubted whether any scholar has ever, at twenty, had a more solid and
profound knowledge of the two great tongues of the old civilised world.
The facility with which he penetrated the meaning of the most intricate
sentences in the Attic writers astonished veteran critics. He had set
his heart on being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry
of Greece, and was not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron's
Cassandra, the most obscure work in the whole range of ancient
literature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties of which have
perplexed and repelled many excellent scholars, "he read," says his
preceptor, "with an ease at first sight, which, if I had not witnessed
it, I should have thought beyond the compass of human intellect."

To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew
no living language except French; and French he knew very imperfectly.
With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly
with Shakspeare and Milton. The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well
deserved to be, one of his favourite passages; and his early friends
used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the
melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable
speech of Belial. He had indeed been carefully trained from infancy in
the art of managing his voice, a voice naturally clear and deep-toned.
His father, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to that art,
had been a most skilful and judicious instructor. At a later period,
the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing, night after night, how
powerfully Pitt's sonorous elocution fascinated the