his seemed
so sensible, and suited Ernest so exactly that he readily fell into it,
nor did he suspect dangers which were apparent enough to me when I heard
how she had treated the matter. I kept silence, however, and for a time
all continued to go well. As I have said, one of his chief pleasures was
in writing. If a man carries with him a little sketch book and is
continually jotting down sketches, he has the artistic instinct; a
hundred things may hinder his due development, but the instinct is there.
The literary instinct may be known by a man's keeping a small note-book
in his waistcoat pocket, into which he jots down anything that strikes
him, or any good thing that he hears said, or a reference to any passage
which he thinks will come in useful to him. Ernest had such a note-book
always with him. Even when he was at Cambridge he had begun the practice
without anyone's having suggested it to him. These notes he copied out
from time to time into a book, which as they accumulated, he was driven
into indexing approximately, as he went along. When I found out this, I
knew that he had the literary instinct, and when I saw his notes I began
to hope great things of him.

For a long time I was disappointed. He was kept back by the nature of
the subjects he chose--which were generally metaphysical. In vain I
tried to get him away from these to matters which had a greater interest
for the general public. When I begged him to try his hand at some
pretty, graceful, little story which should be full of whatever people
knew and liked best, he would immediately set to work upon a treatise to
show the grounds on which all belief rested.

"You are stirring mud," said I, "or poking at a sleeping dog. You are
trying to make people resume consciousness about things, which, with
sensible men, have already passed into the unconscious stage. The men
whom you would disturb are in front of you, and not, as you fancy, behind
you; it is you who are the lagger, not they."

He could not see it. He said he was engaged on an essay upon the famous
_quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_ of St Vincent de Lerins. This
was the more provoking because he showed himself able to do better things
if he had liked.

I was then at work upon my burlesque "The Impatient Griselda," and was
sometimes at my wits' end for a piece of business or a situation; he gave
me many suggestions, all of which were marked by excellent good sense.
Neverth