the Great North Road at four miles by the hour--a pace far beyond the
capacity of Her Majesty's legs; and his verses were Latin--a language not
within the capacity of Her Majesty's mind. Her absence gave him no grief.
In all his twenty-four years he could not remember being grieved by
anyone's absence. His general content was never diminished at finding
himself alone. He chose the Queen as the subject of his verses merely
because he did not admire her. She appeared to him then, as to later
generations, a woman ineffectual and without interest; a dull woman
physically, mentally, and perhaps morally; just the woman upon whom it
would be hardest to make an encomium of any splendour. So he was heartily
ingenious over his alcaics, and relished them.

From this you may divine much that you have to know about the soul of
Harry Boyce. It was more given to mockery than enthusiasms, apter to
criticisms than devotion, not very gentle nor very kind, and so quite
satisfied with itself and by itself. To be sure, it was yet only
twenty-four.

You discover also other things less fundamental. He was something of a
scholar, as scholarship was reckoned in those placid days. He had even
some Greek--more than Mr. Pope and quite as much as Mr. Addison. His
Latin verses would have brought him a fellowship at Merton if he had
been willing to take Holy Orders, "I may take them indeed; but how
believe they have been given me?" quoth he to the Warden with a tilt of
one eyebrow. Whereat the Warden, aghast, wrote him off as a youth
unreasonable, impracticable, and impish. Many others had the same
opinion of Harry Boyce before the world was done with him. Few of them
saw in his antics the uncertain spasms of too tender a conscience. But
you must judge.