310 GEOEGE JOHN ROMANES 1892 



day. The fact is I have been trying to write a sonnet 

 for that occasion ever since I came out here, and can- 

 not. Since my breakdown in June I have entirely 

 lost the power of poetising ; I suppose it will come 

 back if my general health should ever return, but still 

 I did think that such an occasion ought to have in- 

 spired me. Nothing further than rhymes, however, 

 would come, so the day passed over without my in- 

 tended contribution to its memorials. 



So, dear Mentor, do not think hardly of me. For 

 indeed both you and Marion have been much in my 

 thoughts; and for you especially I know this time 

 must be one of many and varied feelings of the kind 

 that sink deepest into the heart. 1 So not only my 

 old affection, but a new sympathy, is with you a 

 sympathy in the joy as in the grief of it. 



Ethel will have told you what little has to be told 

 about our uneventful life here. As I have said to all 

 my correspondents, it is the island that Tennyson 

 must have had in view when he wrote his ' Lotus- 

 eaters.' The description is so exact, that I need not 

 write anything in the way of description, if you will 

 only read it. 



My headaches are growing less intense, although 

 they still keep wonderfully persistent. I cannot fore- 

 see what is likely to happen in the end, as no one 

 seems to know exactly what is the matter with me. 



The last mail brought me a letter from the Master 

 of my College at Cambridge, telling me that I had 

 been unanimously elected to fill a vacancy in the list 



1 Miss Pollock's marriage to Mr. Vernon Boys, F.R.S., is here re- 

 ferred to. 



