re for at least a year.

Claremont had many strange ideas, the most striking of which was the
belief that boys felt a passionate love for poetry. The average boy has
probably read all the poetry he will ever read terms before he ever
reaches the Fifth Form. By the time he is in Shell he has learnt to
appreciate Kipling, the more choice bits of _Don Juan_ and a few
plain-spoken passages in Shakespeare. If English Literature were taught
differently, if he were led by stages from Macaulay to Scott, from Byron
to Rossetti, he might perhaps appreciate the splendid heritage of song,
but as it is, swung straight from _If_ to the _Ode to the Nightingale_
he finds the "shy beauty" of Keats most unutterable nonsense. Claremont,
however, thought otherwise, and ran his form accordingly. In repetition
this was especially noticeable. Kennedy, a small boy with glasses, who
was always word-perfect, would nervously mumble through Henry V's speech
(they always learnt Shakespeare) in an accurate but totally uninspired
way. Mansell would stand at the back of the form and blunder out blank
verse, much of which was his own, and little of which was Shakespeare,
but which certainly sounded most impressive.

"Well, Kennedy," Claremont would say, "you certainly know your words
very well, but I can't bear the way you say them. Five out of twenty.
Mansell, you evidently have made little attempt to learn your repetition
at all, but I love your fervour. One so rarely finds anyone really
affected by the passion of poetry. Fifteen out of twenty."

During his two years in the Lower Fifth Mansell never once spent more
than five minutes learning his "rep," yet on no occasion did he get less
than twelve out of twenty. A bare outline was required, a loud voice
supplied the rest.

In this form it was that Gordon first began to crib. He did not do it
to get marks. He merely wished to avoid being "bottled." Some
headmasters, and the writers to _The Boy's Own Paper_, draw lurid
pictures of the bully who by cribbing steals the prize from the poor
innocent who looks up every word in a big Liddell and Scott; but such
people don't exist. No one ever cribbed in order to get a prize: they
crib from mere slackness. Mansell's exam. prize in IV. A is about the
only instance of a prize won by cribbing. Besides, cribbing is an art.

Ruddock, for instance, when he used to go on to translate, was
accustomed to take up his Vergil in one hand and his Bohn in the other.