and chest made him take
precautions which sometimes seemed whimsical; and his well-known figure
in a black cloak, with a black veil over his college cap, and a black
comforter round his neck, which at one time in Oxford acquired his name,
sometimes startled little boys and sleepy college porters when he came
on them suddenly at night.

With more power than most men of standing alone, and of arranging his
observations on life and the world in ways of his own, he had
pre-eminently above all men round him, in the highest and noblest form,
the spirit of a disciple. Like most human things, discipleship has its
good and its evil, its strong and its poor and dangerous side; but it
really has, what is much forgotten now, a good and a strong side. Both
in philosophy and religion, the [Greek: mathaetaes] is a distinct
character, and Charles Marriott was an example of it at its best. He had
its manly and reasonable humility, its generous trustfulness, its
self-forgetfulness; he had, too, the enthusiasm of having and
recognising a great master and teacher, and doing what he wanted done;
and he learned from the love of his master to love what he believed
truth still more. The character of the disciple does not save a man from
difficulties, from trouble and perplexity; but it tends to save him from
idols of his own making. It is something, in the trials of life and
faith, to have the consciousness of knowing or having known some one
greater and better and wiser than oneself, of having felt the spell of
his guidance and example. Marriott's mind, quick to see what was real
and strong, and at once reverent to it as soon as he saw it, came very
much, as an undergraduate at Balliol, under the influence of a very able
and brilliant tutor, Moberly, afterwards Headmaster of Winchester and
Bishop of Salisbury; and to the last his deference and affection to his
old tutor remained unimpaired. But he came under a still more potent
charm when he moved to Oriel, and became the friend of Mr. Newman.
Master and disciple were as unlike as any two men could be; they were
united by their sympathy in the great crisis round them, by their
absorbing devotion to the cause of true religion. Marriott brought to
the movement, and especially to its chief, a great University character,
and an unswerving and touching fidelity. He placed himself, his life,
and all that he could do, at the service of the great effort to elevate
and animate the Church; to the last