258 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



tion for him. For the college porter he had a lively 

 affection, grateful for much care and kindness ; but 

 neither undergraduate nor porter ever wholly weaned 

 him from his dignified repose on the old M.A. gown. 

 He was thoroughly loyal to his own college, and 

 showed his loyalty, as many of his friends will re- 

 member, by refusing to accept food from a member 

 of any other. Indeed I half suspect that the name 

 of that college took shape in his mind as a verb 

 imperative or permissive, meaning simply to eat. 



Of literary society he saw something, without 

 betraying any mauvaise honte. One valued friend 

 indeed, whose sympathies are too entirely human, 

 failed to appreciate his worth, and was repaid with 

 comparative neglect ; but he has made up for it since 

 by some choice and touching Latin elegiacs dedicated 

 to the memory of the vanished one; sullatum ex 

 oculis qucerimus inwdi. Among English poets Billy 

 could reckon two as his casual acquaintances; and 

 he was equally at home with a commentator on 

 Aristotle's Ethics or with an editor of Cicero's Letters. 

 Even with the editor of Macmillan's Magazine, who 

 honoured him with special attention, he showed no 

 visible uneasiness ; and more than once accompanied 

 him to those classic hills whence " the eye travels 

 down to Oxford towers," to lie on the heather till 

 disturbed by gamekeepers, or to battle with the snow 

 on " the white brow of the Cumnor range." 



