e air and convey me to magically distant
kingdoms.

Inspired by these experiences, and fancying myself destined to
accomplish a counter-revolution in the literary taste of England, I
endeavored night by night to lay the foundations of my own poetic fame.
My bedroom was pungent with the atmosphere of a pre-Tennysonian world.
Its floor, uneven with age, was covered with a carpet whose patterns had
faded into a dim monochrome, and its walls were dark with portraits of
Copplestone forefathers in flowing wigs and satins. My bed was draped
with immemorial curtains, colored like gold and bordered with black
velvet. Close to the bed was a round mahogany table, furnished with pens
and paper, and night by night, propped up by pillows, I endeavored to
rival Dryden and Pope, by means of a quill wet with the dews of
Parnassus--dews which, having sprinkled the bedclothes, would scandalize
the housemaids the next morning by their unfortunate likeness to ink.

My father had originally meant to send me to Harrow, but, on the
recommendation of one of the sons of the Bishop of Exeter, he first
tried on me the effects of a school which had just been established for
the purpose of combining the ordinary course of education with an
inculcation of the extremest principles of the High Church Anglican
party. I was, however, deficient in one of the main characteristics on
which a boy's suitability to school life depends: I had an ingrained
dislike, not indeed of physical exercise, but of games. Football to me
seemed merely a tiresome madness, and cricket the same madness in a more
elaborate form. Instead, therefore, of promoting me to Harrow, where two
of his brothers had been educated, he took, after many delays, a step
for which I sincerely thanked him--he transferred me, by way of
preparation for Oxford, to the most congenial and delightful of all
possible private tutors, at whose house I spent the happiest years of my
life.

CHAPTER III

A PRIVATE TUTOR DE LUXE

Early Youth Under a Private Tutor--Poetry--Premonitions of
Modern Liberalism

The tutor of whom I have spoken was the Rev. W. B. Philpot, a favorite
pupil of Doctor Arnold's at Rugby, an intimate friend of Tennyson's, and
himself a devotee of the Muses. His domed forehead was massive, his
features were delicately chiseled, and his eyes were a clear gray. His
back hair--the only hair he had got--showed a slight tendency to assume
picturesque and flowing curve