'...and we now started Latin, in a little eighteenth-century reading book, out of which my Grandfather had been taught. It consisted of strings of works, and of grim arrangements of conjunction and declension, presented in a manner appallingly unattractive. I used to be set down in the study, under my Father's eye, to learn a solid page of this compilation, while he wrote or painted...It was almost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holding up to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheep-skin cover that smelt of mildewed paste.'