not at all
vindictive, easily pleased, perfectly free with whatever little money he had; no
greater lover of his school work than of the games, and generally more
inclinable to moderate vice than to immoderate virtue.
    These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very low in the opinion of
his school fellows; but Ernest thought he had fallen lower than he probably had,
and hated and despised himself for what he, as much as anyone else, believed to
be his cowardice. He did not like the boys whom he thought like himself. His
heroes were strong and vigorous, and the less they inclined towards him the more
he worshipped them. All this made him very unhappy, for it never occurred to him
that the instinct which made him keep out of games for which he was ill adapted
was more reasonable than the reason which would have driven him into them.
Nevertheless he followed his instinct for the most part rather than his reason -
Sapiens suam si sapientiam nôrit.
 

                                   Chapter 31

With the masters Ernest was ere long in absolute disgrace. He had more liberty
now than he had known heretofore. The heavy hand and watchful eye of Theobald
were no longer about his path and about his bed and spying out all his ways; and
punishment by way of copying out lines of Virgil was a very different thing from
the savage beatings of his father. The copying out in fact was often less
trouble than the lesson. Latin and Greek had nothing in them which commended
them to his instinct as likely to bring him peace even at the last; still less
did they hold out any hope of doing so within some more reasonable time; the
deadness inherent in these defunct languages themselves had never been
artificially counteracted by a system of bonâ fide rewards for application;
there had been any amount of punishments for want of application, but no good
comfortable bribes had baited the hook which was to allure him to his good.
    Indeed the more pleasant side of learning to do this or [that] had always
been treated as something with which Ernest had no concern. We had no business
with pleasant things at all; at any rate very little business; at any rate not
he, Ernest. We were put into this world not for pleasure, but duty, and pleasure
had in it something more or less sinful in its very essence. If we were doing
anything we liked, we, or at any rate he, Ernest, should apologise and think he
was being mercifully dealt with if not at once told to go and do something else.
With what he did not like, however, it was different; the more he