210 Mr. Arthur C. Benson [Jan. 26, 



a permanence which made his memory a treasure-house of dehcate 

 impressions and vignettes. 



It is interesting to note that when Pater was quite a child he 

 went to stay with some friends near Hursley ; here he saw Keble, 

 who, being very fond of children, took a great fancy to the quiet, 

 serious boy, walked with him, and spoke to him of the rehgious life 

 in a way which made a deep impression on his childish mind. 



At fourteen Pater was sent to the King's School, Canterbury, but 

 very little is recorded of his school life ; he was regarded as a back- 

 ward, amiable boy, and was popular with his companions in spite of 

 a pronounced dislike to games. It seems that he was wholly un- 

 ambitious in the earher years of his school life, and probably indulged 

 his taste for dreamy reverie, keeping the inner life of thought, as is 

 common with clever, reticent boys, absolutely apart from the current 

 of school Ufe, and sharing his visions with none. We have, however, 

 another interesting piece of writing which reflects this period of his 

 life, just as The Child in the House reflects the earlier days. It is the 

 study called Emerald Uthwart, and is a fantastic and tragic little 

 story, of which the chief interest is, in the first place, that a fine 

 autobiographical thread is interwoven with the narrative, and in the 

 second place, that Pater tries to depict a certain straightforward, un- 

 reflective, submissive type of Enghsh character, which he seems to 

 have regarded as the characteristic product of an Enghsh pubhc 

 school education, though it was very unhke his own. Emerald 

 Uthwart is sent to a school of which the details are unmistakably 

 drawn from the King's School at Canterbury, and thus we get some 

 idea of the impressions which, at this period of his life, had a strong 

 and abiding effect upon Pater's spirit. The beauty of the great 

 Cathedral, rising from a paradise of lawns and gardens, with houses 

 of every date and style, mellowed by time, and with an air of settled 

 and dignified prosperity about them, seems to have sunk deep into 

 his mind. " If at home," he writes of Emerald Uthwart, " there had 

 been nothing great, here, to boyish sense, one seems diminished to 

 nothing at all, amid the grand waves, wave upon wave, of patiently- 

 wrought stone, the daring height, the daring severity of the in- 

 numerable long, upward ruled lines, rigidly bent just at last in due 

 place into the reserved grace of the perfect Gothic arch ; the peculiar 

 daylight which seemed to come from further than the light outside." 



The only definite artistic influence under which Pater is known to 

 have fallen in his schooldays, is the influence of Ruskin. He found 

 out Ruskin in his nineteenth year, and devoured the volumes greedily. 

 There is a trace of Ruskin's influence discernible in all Pater's work ; 

 there is the same charming naivete and transparency in the best 

 passages of both, the same richness of language ; but liere the hke- 

 ness ends, because Ruskin used his profuse vocabulary lavishly, and 

 sent it pouring down in a sparkhng cascade, while Pater produced his 



