1906.] on Walter Fetter. 219 



But the end was drawing near. It was strange and beautiful that 

 one who had all his life speculated so wistfully and mournfully upon 

 death, sending his thoughts forward into the glimmering land, should 

 have met it in so desirable a shape. 



In the course of 1898 Pater moved back to Oxford, and took a 

 little house in St. Giles' Street, a house of some antiquity, with a 

 quaint character of its own. Here his life moved on with its accus- 

 tomed quietude. He was not a very robust man, though he had 

 never been seriously ill ; in the summer of 1894 he had a bad rheu- 

 matic attack, but became convalescent and resumed work. In con- 

 sequence of writing too near to an open window, he caught a bad chill, 

 but he had apparently recovered his health, when, on leaving his 

 room on the morning of July 30, he died suddenly from failure of 

 the heart. Possibly, if he had reaUsed how much reduced his strength 

 was, and had taken greater care, his life might have been prolonged. 

 He was working in these last days at a lecture on Pascal, which was 

 never completed, a study of pecuhar significance. It shows that for 

 Pater the interest of Pascal's life was the melancholy intensity with 

 which he fled to reUgion of an austere and submissive type, as a 

 shelter against the darkest doubts of the spirit, the agonised question- 

 ing as to whether it is really possible for a man to arrive at any 

 knowledge of the nature of God, or man's relation to God at all — to 

 illustrate which Pater uses the beautiful image of the wayfarer who 

 treads a solid road, but hears the ground suddenly give a hollow 

 sound under his feet, as he passes over deep and cavernous places. 



My own acquaintance with Pater was of the sUghtest. But I will 

 endeavour to describe how he appeared to me on the occasion of my 

 first meeting with him a year or two before his death. 



He was a strongly built man, with a large head and chin. His 

 skin had a kind of ivory pallor, and he looked like a student, though 

 a closely clipped moustache gave him something of a military air ; he 

 walked with a sHght limp ; he had an extraordinarily kind manner, 

 suave and deferential. He spoke precisely, with a curious dwelling 

 on the syllables of words, which gave a somewhat Itahan effect to 

 his pronunciation. He spoke httle, and seemed disinclined to express 

 his own opinion, while on the other hand he managed to convey a 

 strong impression of interest and sympathy. 



The former tone of brilUance and paradox, that used in early days 

 to characterise his talk, had long deserted him, and those who met 

 him in later years were struck rather by a kind of elaborate courtesy 

 and humihty of tone, and an almost dehberate conventionality, which 

 he seemed to use as a shield against intimacy. 



This was certainly a]superficial*trait. His real characteristic was 

 a great independence of mind. There was no one who knew more 

 decidedly what Hne he intended to follow, or followed it more whole- 

 heartedly. He was not a man of deferential mind, but although he 

 judged people^very clear-sightedly, he was intensely anxious to be just 



