text:  But if he had a taste for reading he had other tastes as well and as he thought not incompatible; much as he admired his Roman namesake he could not devote his evenings exclusively to his society but preferred carrying out his precepts occasionally with more modern companions; and he had no notion that during the next four years of his life he was to take an interest in no sports but those of the old Greeks and Romans and mount no horse but Pegasus