ul verses by me, and though they are very
unequal and full of lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note and
displays a subtle insight. I think that he was more ambitious than I
perhaps knew, and had that vague belief in his own powers which is
characteristic of able and unambitious men. His was certainly, on the
whole, a cold nature in those days. He could take up a friendship where
he laid it down, by virtue of an easy frankness and a sympathy that was
intellectual rather than emotional. But the suspension of intercourse
with a friend never troubled him.

I became aware, in the course of a walking tour that I took with him in
those days, that he had a deep perception of the beauties of nature; it
was not a vague accessibility to picturesque impressions, but a
critical discernment of quality. He always said that he cared more for
little vignettes, which he could grasp entire, than for wide and
majestic prospects; and this was true of his whole mind.

I suppose that I tended to idealise him; but he certainly seems to me,
in retrospect, to have then been invested with a singular charm. He was
pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had considerable personal
beauty, rather perhaps of expression than of feature. He was one of
those people with a natural grace of movement, gesture and speech. He
was wholly unembarrassed in manner, but he talked little in a mixed
company. No one had fewer enemies or fewer intimate friends. The
delightful ears soon came to an end, and one of the few times I ever
saw him exhibit strong emotion was on the evening before he left
Cambridge, when he altogether broke down. I remember his quoting a
verse from Omar Khayyam:--

"Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose,
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close,"

and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears.

It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, and I remember envying
him greatly when he told me that his father, who, I gathered, rather
idolised him, was quite content that he should choose for himself at
his leisure. He went abroad for a time; and I met him next in London,
where he was proposing to read for the bar; but I discovered that he
had really found his metier. He had written a novel, which he showed
me, and though it was in some ways an immature performance, it had, I
felt, high and unmistakable literary qualities. It was published soon
afterwards and met with some success. He thereupon devoted himself