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"It were injustice to ask a disciple of the worthy College of Arms at Ratisbon if he comprehendeth the common terms of blazonry," said Toison d'Or, "but I may, without offence, crave of Rouge Sanglier to say if he is instructed in the more mysterious and secret terms of the science, by which the more learned do emblematically, and as it were parabolically, express to each other what is conveyed to others in the ordinary language, taught in the very accidence as it were of Heraldry."
"Our English Professor Latham used to talk much error, in my judgment, of the supreme value to the intellect of studying FORM. This word was to include the 'accidence' of language with the fewest possible words; algebra with the least possible arithmetic ... Logic without real proposition.... Now, in my belief, and that of De Morgan and the late Professor Boole, nothing so ruins the mind as to accustom it to think that it knows something when it can attach no definite ideas to the symbols over which it chatters."
But one day he set me before him on his horse and rode into Shrewsbury, where, after a solemn interview with Mr. Lloyd, the master, I was put into the accidence class at King Edward's famous school.
The time for things worth learning is found by dropping grammar as a subject of special study. There are to be no lessons in grammar or accidence as such, nor of course any verse compositions except for older boys specialising in classics. Mathematics also is treated as a subject which need not be carried beyond the rudiments unless mathematical or physical ability is shown.
We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about them. Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great good will holding it "like a dancer."
Its votaries do not eat to their liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence.
And though I questioned my ability to carry on that work to its due height and proportion, yet as that was not proposed, but an initiation only by accidence into grammar, I consented to the proposal as a present expedient till a more qualified person should be found, without further treaty or mention of terms between us than that of mutual friendship.
When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown Greek Accidence and Smith's Classical Dictionary, besides Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and realise that she was not a stupid little girl.
Curious to consider. The fagging, the illicit boating, and the things forbidden by the schoolmaster, these, I often notice in my Eton acquaintances, are the things that have done them good; these, and not their inconsiderable or considerable knowledge of the Greek accidence almost at all! What is Greek accidence, compared to Spartan discipline, if it can be had?
She taught Oil-of-Gladness the cookery of one of her mothers and the stitchery of the other; she helped Dust-and-Ashes with his accidence, and enlightened him on the sports of the Bridgefield boys, so that his father looked round dismayed at the smothered laughter, when she assured him that she was only telling how her brother Diccon caught a coney, or the like, and in some magical way smoothed down his frowns with her smile.
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