But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy?
I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first
masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first
lessons, reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden
and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the
sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that
passeth away and cometh not again? For those first lessons were better
certainly, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain,
the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what
I will; whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings
of one Aeneas, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because
she killed herself for love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my
miserable self dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.