he was not
eminently successful; nevertheless his lectures, on which he bestowed
much pains, had a fit audience, and powerfully influenced a few select
souls. He resigned his tutorship in 1880, partly because he found himself
not entirely in his element, and partly because literature was becoming
the predominant interest in his life. In 1885 he went to London, where he
remained for 8 years, continuing, however, to reside at Brasenose during
term. The reputation as a writer which he had gained made him welcome in
whatever intellectual circles he found himself. Leaving London in 1893 he
settled in a house in St. Giles, Oxf. In the spring of 1894 he went to
Glasgow to receive the honorary degree of LL.D., a distinction which he
valued. In the summer he had an attack of rheumatic fever, followed by
pleurisy. From these he had apparently recovered, but he succumbed to an
attack of heart-failure which immediately supervened. Thus ended
prematurely in its 55th year a life as bare of outward events as it was
rich in literary fruit and influence.

P. is one of the greatest modern masters of style, and one of the
subtlest and most penetrating of critics. Though not a philosopher in the
technical sense, he deeply pondered the subjects with which philosophy
sets itself to deal; but art was the dominating influence in his
intellectual life, and it was said of him that "he was a philosopher who
had gone to Italy by mistake instead of to Germany." He may also be
called the prophet of the modern aesthetic school. His attitude to
Christianity, though deeply sceptical, was not unsympathetic. As a boy he
came under the influence of Keble, and at one time thought of taking
orders, but his gradual change of view led him to relinquish the idea.
Among his works may be mentioned an article on Coleridge, and others on
Winckelmann, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, etc., which
were _coll._ and _pub._ as _Studies in the History of the Renaissance_
(1873); _Appreciations_ (1889) contained his great essays on _AEsthetic
Poetry_ and _Style_, various Shakespearian studies and papers on Lamb and
Sir T. Browne; _Imaginary Portraits_, and _Greek Studies_ (1894); _Plato
and Platonism_ (1893). His masterpiece, however, is _Marius the
Epicurean_ (1885), a philosophical romance of the time of Marcus
Aurelius. The style of P. is characterised by a subdued richness, and
complicated, but perfect structure of sentences. In character he was
gentle, r