fancy for florid expression,
and to the impatience of somewhat scholastically arranged argument which
has also distinguished our times.

The second of this remarkable trio, John Keble, was the eldest, having
been born on 24th April 1792, at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, with
which county his family had for some centuries been connected. Keble's
father was a clergyman, and there was a clerical feeling and tradition
in the whole family. John went to no public school, but was very
carefully educated at home, obtained an open scholarship at Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, when he was only fourteen, and went into
residence next year--for just at this time extremely early entrance at
the University was much commoner than a little earlier or later. He had
only just entered his nineteenth year when he took a double first, and
had not concluded it when he was elected, at the same time with Whately,
to an Oriel fellowship. He followed this up by winning both the
Chancellor's Essays, English and Latin, and established his reputation
as the most brilliant man of his day. He was ordained as soon as he
could be, and served the usual offices of tutor in his College and
examiner in the University. But even such semi-public life as this was
distasteful to him, and he soon gave up his Oriel tutorship for a
country curacy and private pupils. Indeed the note, some would say the
fault, of Keble's whole life was an almost morbid retiringness, which
made him in 1827 refuse even to compete with Hawkins for the Provostship
of Oriel. It is possible that he would not have been elected, for oddly
enough his two future colleagues in the triumvirate, both Fellows, were
both in favour of his rival; but his shunning the contest has been
deeply deplored, and by some even blamed as a _gran rifiuto_. The
publication of _The Christian Year_, however, which immediately
followed, probably did more for the Movement and for the spiritual life
of England than any office-holding could have done; and in 1831, Keble,
being elected Professor of Poetry, distinguished himself almost as much
in criticism as he had already done in poetry. He obtained, and was
contented with, the living of Hursley, in Hampshire, where he resided
till his death on 29th March 1866.

Keble's very generally granted character as one of the holiest persons
of modern times, and even his influence on the Oxford Movement, concern
us less here than his literary work, which was of almost the fi