hetic
grandiloquence, as he described the sordid end, the shabby little room in
Soho; and, with a reticence which was wholly charming and suggested a much
greater generosity than modesty allowed him to state, the efforts he made
to transport the Poet to some cottage embowered with honeysuckle amid a
flowering orchard. And the lack of sympathy, well-meaning but so tactless,
which had taken the poet instead to the vulgar respectability of
Kennington! Leonard Upjohn described Kennington with that restrained
humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne
necessitated. With delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the
patience with which Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young
student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that
divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings. Beauty from
ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a triumph of irony for that outcast
poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded
Leonard Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy gave him
opportunity for an exquisite passage. And then he told how a friend--his
good taste did not suffer him more than to hint subtly who the friend was
with such gracious fancies--had laid a laurel wreath on the dead poet's
heart; and the beautiful dead hands had seemed to rest with a voluptuous
passion upon Apollo's leaves, fragrant with the fragrance of art, and more
green than jade brought by swart mariners from the manifold, inexplicable
China. And, an admirable contrast, the article ended with a description of
the middle-class, ordinary, prosaic funeral of him who should have been
buried like a prince or like a pauper. It was the crowning buffet, the
final victory of Philistia over art, beauty, and immaterial things.

Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better. It was a miracle of
charm, grace, and pity. He printed all Cronshaw's best poems in the course
of the article, so that when the volume appeared much of its point was
gone; but he advanced his own position a good deal. He was thenceforth a
critic to be reckoned with. He had seemed before a little aloof; but there
was a warm humanity about this article which was infinitely attractive.

LXXXVI

In the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the out-patients'
department, became an in-patients' clerk. This appointment lasted six
months. The clerk spent every morning in the wards, firs