tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan.

'Oh Papa, what is that?' I could not prevent myself from asking.
He translated the verses, he explained their meaning, but his
exposition gave me little interest. What to me was beautiful
Amaryllis? She and her love-sick Tityrus awakened no image
whatever in my mind.

But a miracle had been revealed to me, the incalculable, the
amazing beauty which could exist in the sound of verses. My
prosodical instinct was awakened quite suddenly that dim evening,
as my Father and I sat alone in the breakfast-room after tea,
serenely accepting the hour, for once, with no idea of
exhortation or profit. Verse, 'a breeze mid blossoms playing', as
Coleridge says, descended from the roses as a moth might have
done, and the magic of it took hold of my heart forever. I
persuaded my Father, who was a little astonished at my
insistence, to repeat the lines over and over again. At last my
brain caught them, and as I walked in Benny's garden, or as I
hung over the tidal pools at the edge of the sea, all my inner
being used to ring out with the sound of

Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan.

CHAPTER VIII

IN the previous chapter I have dwelt on some of the lighter
conditions of our life at this time; I must now turn to it in a
less frivolous aspect. As my tenth year advanced, the development
of my character gave my Father, I will not say anxiety, but
matter for serious reflection. My intelligence was now perceived
to be taking a sudden start; visitors drew my Father's attention
to the fact that I was 'coming out so much'. I grew rapidly in
stature, having been a little shrimp of a thing up to that time,
and I no longer appeared much younger than my years. Looking
back, I do not think that there was any sudden mental
development, but that the change was mainly a social one. I had
been reserved, timid and taciturn; I had disliked the company of
strangers. But with my tenth year, I certainly unfolded, so far
as to become sociable and talkative, and perhaps I struck those
around me as grown 'clever', because I said the things which I
had previously only thought. There was a change, no doubt, yet I
believe that it was mainly physical, rather than mental. My
excessive fragility--or apparent fragility, for I must have been
always wiry--decreased; I slept better, and therefore, grew less
nervous; I ate better, and therefore put on flesh. If I preserved
a deli