Format: Single
‘…Observing next, your companion’s fall from the presumed security of your undistinguished position in the rear-guard, you took another pot-shot. The turbid chaos of your mind threw up some memory of the word “dilapidations” which you have pitifully attempted to disguise under the synonym of “ruins”…’ |
This is from “Regulus” in A Diversity of Creatures. King, the formidable classics master at United Services College, is taking the Fifth Form through an ode of Horace. Beetle has just made an inaccurate guess at the meaning of the word ‘delubris’. ‘King’ taught Kipling to ‘loathe Horace for two years; to forget him for twenty, and then to love him for the rest of my days…’ |
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