He is disappointingly reticent about himself. We learn that he was a
native of the mainland; that he came here, as a youth, afflicted with
rheumatic troubles; that these troubles were relived by an application
of those health-giving waters which he lived to describe in one of the
happiest sections of his work, and which were to become famous to the
world at large through certain classical experiments carried out under
his contemporary, the Good Duke Alfred--a potentate who, by the way,
does not seem to have behaved very prettily to our scholar. And that is
absolutely all we know about him. The most painstaking enquiries on the
part of Mr. Eames have failed to add a single item of positive
information to our knowledge of the historian of Nepenthe. We cannot
tell when, or where, he died. He seems to have ended in regarding
himself as a native of the place. The wealth of material incorporated
in the book leads to the supposition that he must have spent long years
on the island. We may further presume, from his title, that he belonged
to the church; it was the surest path of advancement for a young man of
quality in those days.

A perfunctory glance into his pages will suffice to prove that he
lacked what is called the ecclesiastical bent of mind. Reading between
the lines, one soon discovers that his is not so much a priest as a
statesman and philosopher, a student curious in the lore of mankind and
of nature--alert, sagacious, discriminating. He tells us, for example,
that this legend of the visions and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus, which
he was the first to disentangle from its heterogeneous accretions, was
vastly to his liking. Why? Because of its churchly flavour? Not so; but
because he detected therein "truth and symbol. It is a tale of
universal applicability; the type, as it were, of every great man's
life, endeavour, and reward." The introduction to these ANTIQUITIES,
setting forth his maxims for the writing of history, might have been