'[Uncle William] read everything: all the classic works in all the languages he had ever known, or not quite forgotten: Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian; a bit of each every day; and when he was late for dinner, it was always because he was "just finishing a paragraph". He was very shy about it, and would be caught hiding Homer under a pile of papers, and have to be gently coaxed out into the open to talk about him. "Fine fellow, old Homer", he would say; or "Fine fellow, old Go-eethe"'.