"One and one, two"; "two and two, four"; this
was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with armed men,"
and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad similitude,"
were the choice spectacle of my vanity.
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales?
For Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most
sweetlyvain, yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose
would Virgil be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was
Homer. Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue,
dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable.
For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I
was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also
(as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or
suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and
jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I
learned without any pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart
urged me to give birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by
learning words not of those who taught, but of those who talked with
me; in whose ears also I gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I
conceived.
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