the Gentiles. While we all--all who attempt rhyme--have more or less
consciously imitated the manner of Lord Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne, Mr.
Rossetti, such imitations of Mr. Browning are uncommonly scarce. He is
lucky enough not to have had the seed of his flower stolen and sown
everywhere till--

"Once again the people
Called it but a weed."

The other new poet of these days was Mr. Clough, who has many
undergraduate qualities. But his peculiar wistful scepticism in religion
had then no influence on such of us as were still happily in the ages of
faith. Anything like doubt comes less of reading, perhaps, than of the
sudden necessity which, in almost every life, puts belief on her trial,
and cries for an examination of the creeds hitherto held upon authority,
and by dint of use and wont. In a different way one can hardly care for
Mr. Matthew Arnold, as a boy, till one has come under the influence of
Oxford. So Mr. Browning was the only poet added to my pantheon at St.
Andrews, though Macaulay then was admitted and appeared to be more the
true model of a prose writer than he seems in the light of later
reflection. Probably we all have a period of admiring Carlyle almost
exclusively. College essays, when the essayist cares for his work, are
generally based on one or the other. Then they recede into the
background. As for their thought, we cannot for ever remain disciples.
We begin to see how much that looks like thought is really the expression
of temperament, and how individual a thing temperament is, how each of us
must construct his world for himself, or be content to wait for an answer
and a synthesis "in that far-off divine event to which the whole creation
moves." So, for one, in these high matters, I must be content as a
"masterless man" swearing by no philosopher, unless he be the imperial