I. OF AGE 259

safely installed in the drawing-room on the other side of the fireplace from my idol-niche: and I went triumphantly back to St. Aldate’s and “Winchelsea.”

In spite of Gordon’s wholesome moderatorship, the work had come by that time to high pressure, until twelve at night from six in the morning, with little exercise, no cheerfulness, and no sense of any use in what I read, to myself or anybody else: things progressing also smoothly in Paris, to the abyss. One evening, after Gordon had left me, about ten o’clock, a short tickling cough surprised me, because preceded by a curious sensation in the throat, and followed by a curious taste in the mouth, which I presently perceived to be that of blood. It must have been on a Saturday or Sunday evening, for my father, as well as my mother, was in the High Street lodgings.¹ I walked round to them and told them what had happened.

17. My mother, an entirely skilled physician in all forms of consumptive disease, was not frightened, but sent round to the Deanery to ask leave for me to sleep out of my lodgings. Morning consultations ended in our going up to town, and town consultations in my being forbid any farther reading under pressure, and in the Dean’s giving me, with many growls, permission to put off taking my degree for a year. During the month or two following, passed at Herne Hill, my father’s disappointment at the end of his hopes of my obtaining distinction in Oxford was

Divinity reading for the schools was as little tonic in moral manners as any other literary analysis-and I quite forget, now, how much vestige of conscience, or resolution, mingled with the vague devotion, ceremonial always with me of morning and evening, and church service formally attended. There was, however, a certain vital force in these habits greater than I now remember, and a steady respect for whatever was holy and true, so far as I knew or saw it, and daily increase also of such knowledge and sight, however little availing.

“In this-now unintelligible to me-state of mind, hard and stupid, and sufficiently miserable-a state of mental mildew not worth farther analysis or memory-I went back to Oxford for my last push of reading. In spite of Gordon’s wholesome moderatorship, it had come by that time to work till twelve at night, rising at six in the morning, with little exercise, no cheerfulness, and no sense of any use in what I read to myself or anybody else, but to get a class with. One evening after Gordon had left me...”]

¹ [See above, p. 199.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]