"I have acquired quite an average student's power to read the
common ancient classics, Latin in particular." This was true,
Jude possessing a facility in that language which enabled him with
great ease to himself to beguile his lonely walks by imaginary
conversations therein.
"I have read two books of the _Iliad_, besides being pretty familiar
with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book,
the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of
Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the
funeral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, a
little scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament... I
wish there was only one dialect all the same.
"I have done some mathematics, including the first six and the
eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid; and algebra as far as simple
equations.
"I know something of the Fathers, and something of Roman and English
history.
"These things are only a beginning. But I shall not make much
farther advance here, from the difficulty of getting books. Hence I
must next concentrate all my energies on settling in Christminster.
Once there I shall so advance, with the assistance I shall there
get, that my present knowledge will appear to me but as childish
ignorance. I must save money, and I will; and one of those colleges
shall open its doors to me--shall welcome whom now it would spurn,
if I wait twenty years for the welcome.
"I'll be D.D. before I have done!"
And then he continued to dream, and thought he might become even a
bishop by leading a pure, energetic, wise, Christian life. And what
an example he would set! If his income were L5000 a year, he would
give away L4500 in one form and another, and live sumptuously (for
him) on the remainder. Well, on second thoughts, a bishop was
absurd. He would draw the line at an archdeacon. Perhaps a man
could be as good and as learned and as useful in the capacity of
archdeacon as in that of bishop. Yet he thought of the bishop again.
"Meanwhile I will read, as soon as I am settled in Christminster,
the books I have not been able to get hold of here: Livy, Tacitus,
Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes--"
"Ha, ha, ha! Hoity-toity!" The sounds were expressed in light
voices on the other side of the hedge, but he did not notice them.
His thoughts went on: "--Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Seneca,
Antoninus. Then I must master other things: the Fathers thoroughly;
Bede and ecclesiastical history generally; a smattering of Hebrew--I
only know the letters as yet--"