'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'