He did not believe it;
indeed he knew very well that if they thought him clever they were being
taken in, but it pleased him to have been able to take them in, and he
tried to do so still further; he was therefore a good deal on the look-
out for cants that he could catch and apply in season, and might have
done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over
any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy;
his friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting
several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady
straight flight, but when he had once got into this he would keep to it.
CHAPTER XLVI
When he was in his third year a magazine was founded at Cambridge, the
contributions to which were exclusively by undergraduates. Ernest sent
in an essay upon the Greek Drama, which he has declined to let me
reproduce here without his being allowed to re-edit it. I have therefore
been unable to give it in its original form, but when pruned of its
redundancies (and this is all that has been done to it) it runs as
follows--
"I shall not attempt within the limits at my disposal to make a
_resume_ of the rise and progress of the Greek drama, but will confine
myself to considering whether the reputation enjoyed by the three
chief Greek tragedians, AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, is one
that will be permanent, or whether they will one day be held to have
been overrated.
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