252 PRÆTERITA-II

Oxford, and perfectly practised in all the college routine of business. He thought that the Church of England had-even in Oxford-enough to do in looking after her own faults; and addressed himself, in our conversations on Forest Hill, mainly to mollify my Protestant animosities, enlarge my small acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, and recall my attention to the immediate business in hand, of enjoying our walk, and recollecting what we had read in the morning.

In his proper work with me, no tutor could have been more diligent or patient. His own scholarly power was of the highest order; his memory (the necessary instrument of great scholarship) errorless and effortless; his judgment and feeling in literature sound; his interpretation of political events always rational, and founded on wide detail of well-balanced knowledge; and all this without in the least priding himself on his classic power, or wishing to check any of my impulses in other directions. He had taken his double first with the half of his strength, and would have taken a triple one without priding himself on it: he was amused by my facility in rhyming, recognized my true instinct in painting, and sympathised with me in love of country life and picturesque towns, but always in a quieting and reposeful manner. Once in after life, provoked at finding myself still unable to read Greek easily, I intimated to him a half-formed purpose to throw everything else aside, for a time, and make myself a sound Greek scholar. “I think it would give you more trouble than it is worth,” said he. Another time, as I was making the drawing of “Chamouni in afternoon sunshine”¹ for him, (now at his sister’s,) I spoke of the constant vexation I suffered because I could not draw better. “And I,” he said simply, “should be very content if I could draw at all.”

11. During Gordon’s stay with us, this 1839 autumn, we got our second Turner drawing. Certainly the most

¹ [This drawing, made in 1844, is reproduced on Plate 4 in Vol. III. (p. 240).]

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