‘You know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I saw this stone first when I
was ten years old. I had read about it in a book called _The Wonders
of Antiquity_, and I came to see it with my mother, and it seemed
to me even then the best thing in the world to work out new languages
from old inscriptions, and discover new worlds like that—much
better than discovering new things in this world. I have wanted
to do it ever since, and now, partly, I can work at that; but
I have to do Roman inscriptions too, because that was for a thesis
to start with, to get my D.Litt., and I have to for the History
school also. So I have got launched into Roman Britain, but what
I really want to get at is the proto-Hittite script from Zenjirli
and Sakjegöze and those things—those undeciphered hieroglyphs,
you know.’
I did not know what the proto-Hittite script was then; it seems
curious now to think of a time when I had not heard of it, but
I thought I understood what he meant about discovering new worlds
that way.