'One evening my father took down his Virgil from an upper shelf...And then, in the twilight, as he shut the volume at last, oblivious of my presence, he began to murmur and to chant the adorable verses by memory...I stopped my play, and listened as if to a nightingale ... 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 ... I persuaded my Father, who was a little astonished at my insistance, to repeat the lines over and over again. At last my brain caught them."