III

One such face I now remember; one such blank some half-a-dozen of
us labour to dissemble. In his youth he was most beautiful in

person, most serene and genial by disposition; full of racy words
and quaint thoughts. Laughter attended on his coming. He had the

air of a great gentleman, jovial and royal with his equals, and to
the poorest student gentle and attentive. Power seemed to reside

in him exhaustless; we saw him stoop to play with us, but held him
marked for higher destinies; we loved his notice; and I have rarely

had my pride more gratified than when he sat at my father's table,
my acknowledged friend. So he walked among us, both hands full of

gifts, carrying with nonchalance the seeds of a most influential
life.

The powers and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, looking
back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he was, for

some shadow of what he was to be. For with all his beauty, power,
breeding, urbanity and mirth, there was in those days something

soulless in our friend. He would astonish us by sallies, witty,
innocent and inhumane; and by a misapplied Johnsonian pleasantry,

demolish honest sentiment. I can still see and hear him, as he
went his way along the lamplit streets, LA CI DAREM LA MANO on his

lips, a noble figure of a youth, but following vanity and
incredulous of good; and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of

life, with his health, his hopes, his patrimony and his self-
respect, miserably went down.

From this disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came desperately
ashore, bankrupt of money and consideration; creeping to the family

he had deserted; with broken wing, never more to rise. But in his
face there was a light of knowledge that was new to it. Of the

wounds of his body he was never healed; died of them gradually,
with clear-eyed resignation; of his wounded pride, we knew only

from his silence. He returned to that city where he had lorded it
in his ambitious youth; lived there alone, seeing few; striving to

retrieve the irretrievable; at times still grappling with that
mortal frailty that had brought him down; still joying in his

friend's successes; his laugh still ready but with kindlier music;
and over all his thoughts the shadow of that unalterable law which

he had disavowed and which had brought him low. Lastly, when his
bodily evils had quite disabled him, he lay a great while dying,

still without complaint, still finding interests; to his last step
gentle, urbane and with the will to smile.

The tale of this great failure is, to those who remained true to
him, the tale of a success. In his youth he took thought for no

one but himself; when he came ashore again, his whole armada lost,
he seemed to think of none but others. Such was his tenderness for

others, such his instinct of fine courtesy and pride, that of that
impure passion of remorse he never breathed a syllable; even regret

was rare with him, and pointed with a jest. You would not have
dreamed, if you had known him then, that this was that great

failure, that beacon to young men, over whose fall a whole society
had hissed and pointed fingers. Often have we gone to him, red-hot

with our own hopeful sorrows, railing on the rose-leaves in our
princely bed of life, and he would patiently give ear and wisely

counsel; and it was only upon some return of our own thoughts that
we were reminded what manner of man this was to whom we

disembosomed: a man, by his own fault, ruined; shut out of the
garden of his gifts; his whole city of hope both ploughed and

salted; silently awaiting the deliverer. Then something took us by
the throat; and to see him there, so gentle, patient, brave and

pious, oppressed but not cast down, sorrow was so swallowed up in
admiration that we could not dare to pity him. Even if the old

fault flashed out again, it but awoke our wonder that, in that lost
battle, he should have still the energy to fight. He had gone to

ruin with a kind of kingly ABANDON, like one who condescended; but
once ruined, with the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.

Most men, finding themselves the authors of their own disgrace,
rail the louder against God or destiny. Most men, when they

repent, oblige their friends to share the bitterness of that
repentance. But he had held an inquest and passed sentence: MENE,

MENE; and condemned himself to smiling silence. He had given
trouble enough; had earned misfortune amply, and foregone the right

to murmur.
Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless in his days of

strength; but on the coming of adversity, and when that strength
was gone that had betrayed him - "for our strength is weakness" -

he began to blossom and bring forth. Well, now, he is out of the
fight: the burden that he bore thrown down before the great

deliverer. We
"In the vast cathedral leave him;

God accept him,
Christ receive him!"

IV
If we go now and look on these innumerable epitaphs, the pathos and

the irony are strangely fled. They do not stand merely to the
dead, these foolish monuments; they are pillars and legends set up

to glorify the difficult but not desperate life of man. This
ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.

I see the indifferent pass before my friend's last resting-place;
pause, with a shrug of pity, marvelling that so rich an argosy had

sunk. A pity, now that he is done with suffering, a pity most
uncalled for, and an ignorant wonder. Before those who loved him,

his memory shines like a reproach; they honour him for silent
lessons; they cherish his example; and in what remains before them

of their toil, fear to be unworthy of the dead. For this proud man
was one of those who prospered in the valley of humiliation; - of

whom Bunyan wrote that, "Though Christian had the hard hap to meet
in the valley with Apollyon, yet I must tell you, that in former

times men have met with angels here; have found pearls here; and
have in this place found the words of life."

CHAPTER IV. A COLLEGE MAGAZINE
I

ALL through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out for
the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own

private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books
in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind

was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by
the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-

book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or
commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And

what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written
consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be

an author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I
would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and

I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with
myself. Description was the principal field of my exercise; for to

any one with senses there is always something worth describing, and
town and country are but one continuous subject. But I worked in

other ways also; often accompanied my walks with dramatic
dialogues, in which I played many parts; and often exercised myself

in writing down conversations from memory.
This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes

tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them
a school of posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet this

was not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it
was, it only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the

lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the
essential note and the right word: things that to a happier

constitution had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training,
it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement.

So that there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more
effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a

passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or
an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some

conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must
sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was

unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again
unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain

bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction
and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous