a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar.
He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If
he was distinguished for anything it was for verse-writing: but was his
enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed the number
of lines demanded by the regulations (unlike young Swettenham, for
instance, who, with no more of poetry in his composition than Mr.
Wakley, yet would bring up a hundred dreary hexameters to the master
after a half-holiday; or young Fluxmore, who not only did his own
verses, but all the fifth form's besides). He never read to improve
himself out of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the
novels, plays, and poetry, on which he could lay his hands. He never was
flogged, but it was a wonder how he escaped the whipping-post. When he
had money he spent it royally in tarts for himself and his friends;
he has been known to disburse nine and sixpence out of ten shillings
awarded to him in a single day. When he had no funds he went on tick.
When he could get no credit he went without, and was almost as happy.
He has been known to take a thrashing for a crony without saying a
word; but a blow, ever so slight from a friend, would make him roar. To
fighting he was averse from his earliest youth, as indeed to physic, the
Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and would engage in none of them,
except at the last extremity. He seldom if ever told lies, and never
bullied little boys. Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he
loved with boyish ardour. And though the Doctor, when he did not know
his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play, said that that boy
Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate for ruin in this
world, and perdition in the next; a profligate who would most likely
bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonoured
grave, and the like--yet as the Doctor made use of these compliments
to most of the boys in the place (which has not turned out an unusual
number of felons and pickpockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and
terrified by these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them;
and he has not, in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any
act worthy of transportation or hanging up to the present day.

There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
before they quitted that seminary. Many of