he had taken
a double first in Greats. Then the publication of an article in one of
the leading Reviews on "The Ideals of Modern Culture," not only brought
him a furious letter from home stopping all supplies, but also lost him
a probable fellowship. His college was one of the narrowest and most
backward in Oxford, and it was made perfectly plain to him before the
fellowship examination that he would not be elected.

He left the college, took pupils for a while, then stood for a vacant
fellowship at St. Anselm's, the Liberal headquarters, and got it with
flying colors.

Thenceforward one would have thought that a brilliant and favorable
mental development was secured to him. Not at all. The moment of his
quarrel with his father and his college had, in fact, represented a
moment of energy, of comparative success, which never recurred. It Was
as though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him, as
if some deep-rooted instinct--cold, critical, reflective--had reasserted
itself, condemning him and his censors equally. The uselessness of
utterance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal,
the practical absurdity of trying to realize any of the mind's inward
dreams: these were the kind of considerations which descended upon him,
slowly and fatally, crushing down the newly springing growths of
action or of passion. It was as though life had demonstrated to him the
essential truth of a childish saying of his own which had startled and
displeased his Calvinist mother years before. "Mother," the delicate,
large-eyed child had said to her one day in a fit of physical weariness,
"how is it I dislike the things I dislike so much more than I like the
things I like?"

So he wrote no more, he quarreled no more, he meddled with the great
passionate things of life and expression no more. On his taking up
residence in St. Anselm's, indeed, and on his being appointed first
lecturer and then tutor, he had a momentary pleasure in the thought of
teaching. His mind was a storehouse of thought and fact, and to the
man brought up at a dull provincial day-school and never allowed to
associate freely with his kind, the bright lads fresh from Eton and
Harrow about him were singularly attractive. But a few terms were enough
to scatter this illusion too. He could not be simple, he could not
be spontaneous; he was tormented by self-consciousness; and it was
impossible to him to talk and behave as those talk and b