However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on horribly quick.

He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words, instead of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them how it should be done.
Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an hour more, but the forty lines are all but done.

So the boys, one after another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and ever more bald work of it.

The poor young master is pretty near beat by this time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his fingers against somebody else's head.

So he gives up altogether the lower and middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the boys on the top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can strike a spark or two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder the most beautiful utterances of the most beautiful woman of the old world.