He thought, looking at it in a direct and straight manner, that Niobe had a right to be proud of her children, and for Apollo to slay them because of that pride was monstrous.
His mind also rebelled at his Virgil.

He did not care much for the elderly lover, AEneas, who fled from Carthage and Dido, and when AEneas and his band came to Italy his sympathies were largely with Turnus, who tried to keep his country and the girl that really belonged to him.

He was quite sure that something had been wrong in the mind of Virgil and that he ought to have chosen another kind of hero.
Shakespeare, whom he had been compelled to read at school, he now read of his own accord, and he felt his romance and poetry.

But he lingered longer over the somewhat prosy ancient history of Monsieur Rollin.

His imaginative mind did not need much of a hint to attempt the reconstruction of old empires.