of Filmer's life and death.

The first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history is a document
in which he applies for admission as a paid student in physics to the
Government laboratories at South Kensington, and therein he describes
himself as the son of a "military bootmaker" ("cobbler" in the vulgar
tongue) of Dover, and lists his various examination proofs of a high
proficiency in chemistry and mathematics. With a certain want of dignity
he seeks to enhance these attainments by a profession of poverty and
disadvantages, and he writes of the laboratory as the "gaol" of his
ambitions, a slip which reinforces his claim to have devoted himself
exclusively to the exact sciences. The document is endorsed in a manner
that shows Filmer was admitted to this coveted opportunity; but until
quite recently no traces of his success in the Government institution
could be found.

It has now, however, been shown that in spite of his professed zeal
for research, Filmer, before he had held this scholarship a year, was
tempted, by the possibility of a small increase in his immediate income,
to abandon it in order to become one of the nine-pence-an-hour computers
employed by a well-known Professor in his vicarious conduct of those
extensive researches of his in solar physics--researches which are still
a matter of perplexity to astronomers. Afterwards, for the space of
seven years, save for the pass lists of the London University, in which
he is seen to climb slowly to a double first class B.Sc., in mathematics
and chemistry, there is no evidence of how Filmer passed his life. No
one knows how or where he lived, though it seems highly probable that he
continued to support himself by teaching while he prosecuted the studies
necessary for this distinction. And then, oddly enough, one finds him
mentioned in the correspondence of Arthur Hicks, the poet.

"You remember Filmer," Hicks writes to his friend Vance; "well, HE
hasn't altered a bit, the same hostile mumble and the nasty chin--how
CAN a man contrive to be always three days from shaving?--and a sort of
furtive air of being engaged in sneaking in front of one; even his
coat and that frayed collar of his show no further signs of the passing
years. He was writing in the library and I sat down beside him in the
name of God's charity, whereupon he deliberately insulted me by covering
up his memoranda. It seems he has some brilliant research on hand that
he suspects me of all peo