all senses of the word, as when, released from the "idols of the
lecture-room," he was seeking to awake, or keep alive, in others that
love of imaginative beauty which counted for so much in his own life and
in his discharge of the daily tasks that fell upon him: speaking freely
and from his heart to men and women more or less of his own age and his
own aspirations; "mingling leadership and _camaraderie_ in the happy
union so characteristic of him," and "drawing out the best endeavours of
his pupils by his modest, quietly effective methods of teaching and,
above all, by his great, quiet, human love for each and all."(5)

It is clear that such work, however delightful to him, meant a
considerable call upon his time and strength: the more so as it went
hand in hand with constant labours on behalf of the Yorkshire Dialect
Society, for which he was the most indefatigable of travellers--cycling
his way into dale after dale in search of "records"--and of which, on
the death of his friend, Mr Philip Unwin, he eventually became
president. Nor was this all. During the last seven years or so of his
life the creative impulse, the need of embodying his own life and the
lives of those around him in imaginative form was constantly growing
upon him, and a wholly new horizon was opening before him.

At first he may have thought of nothing more than to produce plays
suitable for performance either by the students of the University or by
young people in those Yorkshire dales with which his affections were
becoming year by year increasingly bound up. But, whatever the occasion,
it soon proved to be no more than an occasion. He swiftly found that
imaginative expression not only came naturally to him, but was a deep
necessity of his nature; that it gave a needed outlet to powers and
promptings which had hitherto lain dormant and whose very existence was
unsuspected by his friends, perhaps even by himself. _The May King_,