to win the love of a hitherto unknown son by risking his life in
order to show himself worthy of it--and succeeding.

Butler's health had already begun to fail, and when he started for
Sicily on Good Friday, 1902, it was for the last time: he knew he
was unfit to travel, but was determined to go, and was looking
forward to meeting Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Fuller Maitland, whom he was to
accompany over the Odyssean scenes at Trapani and Mount Eryx. But he
did not get beyond Palermo; there he was so much worse that he could
not leave his room. In a few weeks he was well enough to be removed
to Naples, and Alfred went out and brought him home to London. He
was taken to a nursing home in St. John's Wood where he lay for a
month, attended by his old friend Dr. Dudgeon, and where he died on
the 18th June, 1902.

There was a great deal he still wanted to do. He had intended to
revise 'The Way of All Flesh', to write a book about Tabachetti, and
to publish a new edition of 'Ex Voto' with the mistakes corrected.
Also he wished to reconsider the articles reprinted in 'The Humour of
Homer', and was looking forward to painting more sketches and
composing more music. While lying ill and very feeble within a few
days of the end, and not knowing whether it was to be the end or not,
he said to me:

"I am much better to-day. I don't feel at all as though I were going
to die. Of course, it will be all wrong if I do get well, for there
is my literary position to be considered. First I write 'Erewhon'--
that is my opening subject; then, after modulating freely through all
my other books and the music and so on, I return gracefully to my
original key and write 'Erewhon Revisited'. Obviously, now is the