more mournful odes--with such attention to the rhythm, I must add,
as, although plentiful enough among scholars in respect of the dead
letter, is rarely found with them in respect of the living vocal
utterance.

Nor had he now sat long upon his stone, heedless of the world's
preparations for winter, before he began repeating to himself the
poet's Aequam memento rebus in arduis, which he had been trying much,
but with small success, to reproduce in similar English cadences,
moved thereto in part by the success of Tennyson in his O
mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies--a thing as yet alone in the
language, so far as I know. It was perhaps a little strange that the
curate should draw the strength of which he was most conscious from
the pages of a poet whose hereafter was chiefly servicable to him--
in virtue of its unsubstantiality and poverty, the dreamlike
thinness of its reality--in enhancing the pleasures of the world of
sun and air, cooling shade and songful streams, the world of wine
and jest, of forms that melted more slowly from encircling arms, and
eyes that did not so swiftly fade and vanish in the distance. Yet
when one reflects but for a moment on the poverty-stricken
expectations of Christians from their hereafter, I cease to wonder
at Wingfold; for human sympathy is lovely and pleasant, and if a
Christian priest and a pagan poet feel much in the same tone
concerning the affairs of a universe, why should they not comfort
each other by sitting down together in the dust?

"No hair it boots thee whether from Inachus
Ancient descended, or, of the poorest born,
Thy being drags, all bare and roofless--
Victim the same to the heartless Orcus.