like the shadow of a passing cloud as it
falls on the cricket field over which the shouts of the players are
ringing. The metres are various: all show rhythmical skill, and in all
the verse has a swing which makes it singularly effective when sung
by a mass of voices. Most of the songs are dedicated to cricket or
football, but a few are serious, and two or three of these have a
beauty of thought and perfection of form which make the reader ask why
a poetic gift so true and so delicate should have been rarely used.
These songs were the work of his middle or later years, and he never
wrote except when the impulse came upon him. The stream ran pure but
it ran seldom. In early days he had been for a while, like many other
brilliant young University men of his time, a contributor to the
_Saturday Review_. (There surely never was a journal which enlisted so
much and such varied literary talent as the _Saturday_ did between
1855 and 1863.) Bowen's articles were, like his elder brother's,
extremely witty. In later life he could seldom be induced to write,
having fallen out of the habit, and being, indeed, too busy to carry
on any large piece of work; but the occasional papers on educational
subjects he produced showed no decline in his vivacity or in the
abundance of his humour. Those who knew the range and the resources of
his mind sometimes regretted that he would do nothing to let the world
know them. But he was, to a degree most unusual among men of real
power, absolutely indifferent, not only to fame, but to opportunities
for exercising power or influence.

The stoicism which he sought to form in his pupils was inculcated by
his own example. It was a genial and cheerful stoicism, which checked
neither his affection for them nor his brightness in society, and
which permitted him to draw as much enjoyment from small things as
most people can from great ones. But if he had the gaiety of an
Irishman, he had a double portion of English reserve. He never gave
expression in words to his emotions. He never seemed either elated or
depressed. He never lost his temper and never seemed to be curbing it.
His tastes and way of life were simple to the verge of austerity; nor
did he appear to desire anything more than what he had obtained.

It is natural--possibly foolish, yet almost inevitable--that those
who perceive in a friend the presence of rare and brilliant gifts
should desire that his gifts should not only be turned to full
ac