, as a
boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar. He did, in
fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If he was distinguished
for anything, it was for verse-writing; but was his enthusiasm ever so great, it
stopped when he had composed the number of lines demanded by the regulations
(unlike young Swettenham, for instance, who, with no more of poetry in his
composition than Mr. Wakely, yet would bring up a hundred dreary hexameters to
the master after a half-holiday; or young Fluxmore, who not only did his own
verses, but all the fifth form's besides). He never read to improve himself out
of school hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and
poetry on which he could lay his hands. He never was flogged, but it was a
wonder how he escaped the whipping-post. When he had money, he spent it royally
in tarts for himself and his friends: he has been known to disburse nine and
sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. When he had no
funds, he went on tick. When he could get no credit, he went without, and was
almost as happy. He has been known to take a thrashing for a crony without
saying a word; but a blow, ever so slight, from a friend, would make him roar.
To fighting he was averse from his earliest youth, as indeed to physic, the
Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and would engage in none of them except at
the last extremity. He seldom if ever told lies, and never bullied little boys.
Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he loved with boyish ardour. And
though the Doctor, when he did not know his Horace, or could not construe his
Greek play, said that that boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a
candidate for ruin in this world and perdition in the next - a profligate who
would most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a
dishonoured grave, and the like - yet as the Doctor made use of these
compliments to most of the boys in the place (which has not turned out an
unusual number of felons and pickpockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and
terrified by these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has
not, in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of
transportation or hanging up to the
