I picked up The Quest for Corvo by A. J. A. Symons secure in the knowledge that I had read it before, many years ago. Turns out I did not remember one word …  so maybe I didn’t read it after all? What an extraordinary book. Just two brief notes: 

First: Frederick Rolfe (AKA Baron Corvo) was a paranoid’s paranoid, and spent the final years of his impoverished life writing abusive letters to the people who had been most kind to him. Apparently he devoted much creative energy to this task: “He wrote dozens of letters, all venomous and all different, though he seldom descended to mere abuse. One began ‘Quite cretinous creature’; another ended ‘Bitterest execrations’. ‘Your faithful enemy’ was perhaps his favourite termination.” 

I shall remember these rhetorical flourishes and make use of them in replying to my critics. 

Second: For a time Rolfe worked for one of his most constant supporters, Ernest Hardy, then the Vice-principal of Jesus College, Oxford. He was given the unenviable task of marking examination papers, and in a letter to a friend he described the work: 

This Examination (the Honour School of Literae Humaniores) is an experience. We are doing Ancient History, Logick, Roman History, Translation. The papers are perfectly appalling. The vilest, vulgarest scripts, the silliest spelling, infinitives split to the midriff. I asked Hardy what was to be done with these crimes against fair English, and he answered sedately, ‘Pass them over with silent contempt.’ 

That’s what I’m doing from now on when my students write poor essays or exams. Instead of explaining what went wrong and giving advice on how to do better, I shall pass over those writings with silent contempt.