and was looking forward to meeting Mr.
and Mrs. J. A. Fuller Maitland, whom he was to accompany over the
Odyssean scenes at Trapani and Mount Eryx. But he did not get beyond
Palermo; there he was so much worse that he could not leave his room. In
a few weeks he was well enough to be removed to Naples, and Alfred went
out and brought him home to London. He was taken to a nursing home in
St. John's Wood where he lay for a month, attended by his old friend Dr.
Dudgeon, and where he died on the 18th June, 1902.

There was a great deal he still wanted to do. He had intended to revise
_The Way of All Flesh_, to write a book about Tabachetti, and to publish
a new edition of _Ex Voto_ with the mistakes corrected. Also he wished
to reconsider the articles reprinted in _The Humour of Homer_, and was
looking forward to painting more sketches and composing more music. While
lying ill and very feeble within a few days of the end, and not knowing
whether it was to be the end or not, he said to me:

"I am much better to-day. I don't feel at all as though I were going to
die. Of course, it will be all wrong if I do get well, for there is my
literary position to be considered. First I write _Erewhon_--that is my
opening subject; then, after modulating freely through all my other books
and the music and so on, I return gracefully to my original key and write
_Erewhon Revisited_. Obviously, now is the proper moment to come to a
full close, make my bow and retire; but I believe I am getting well,
after all. It's very inartistic, but I cannot help it."

Some of his readers complain that they often do not know whether he is
serious or jesting. He wrote of Lord Beaconsfield: "Earnestness was his
greatest danger, but if he did not quite overcome it (as indeed who can?
it is the last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a
fair amount of success." To veil his own earnestness he turned most
naturally to humour, employing it in a spirit of reverence, as all the
great humorists have done, to express his deepest and most serious
convictions. He was aware that he ran the risk of being misunderstood by
some, but he also knew that it is useless to try to please all, and, like
Mozart, he wrote to please himself and a few intimate friends.

I cannot speak at length of his kindness, consideration, and sympathy;
nor of his generosity, the extent of which was very great and can never
be known--it was sometimes exercised