midday
Even the hours of study were uncertain . He read when he liked , and his father seemed content with long days of idleness followed by others of application . It was , indeed , only owing to his love of what he read that the boy learned at all . Often while he tramped from his home to the village at midday his heart was hot within him with some great thought which had sprung to him from a hastily construed chorus of Euripides . Sometimes he startled the fishermen when he went with them at night by chanting Homer 's rolling hexameters through the darkness while the boat lay waiting , borne gunwale down to the black water with the drag of the net that had been shot . There was a tacit understanding that Hyacinth , like his father , was to take Holy Orders . He matriculated in Trinity College when he was eighteen , and , as is often done by poorer students , remained at home , merely passing the required examinations , until he took his degree , and the time came for his entering the divinity school .