The Way of all Flesh by Samuel Butler

I may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days. He rose, always in spite of himself, into the Doctor's form, and for the last two years or so of his time was among the prepostors, though he never rose into the upper half of them. He did little, and I think the Doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better leave to himself, for he rarely made him construe, and he used to send in his exercises or not, pretty much as he liked. His tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in time effected more even than a few bold sallies in the first instance would have done. To the end of his career his position inter pares was what it had been at the beginning, namely, among the upper part of the less reputable class -- whether of seniors or juniors -- rather than among the lower part of the more respectable.

Only once in the whole course of his school life did he get praise from Dr. Skinner for any exercise, and this he has treasured as the best example of guarded approval which he has ever seen. He had had to write a copy of Alcaics on "The dogs of the monks of St. Bernard," and when the exercise was returned to him he found the Doctor had written on it: "In this copy of Alcaics -- which is still excessively bad -- I fancy that I can discern some faint symptoms of improvement. " Ernest says that if the exercise was any better than usual it must have been by a fluke, for he is sure that he always liked dogs, especially St. Bernard dogs, far too much to take any pleasure in writing Alcaics about them.