XV 



LOVE OF ART 389 



whose writings he found a moral grandeur to be 

 ranked with that of the Hebrew prophets. Eager to 

 read Dante in the original, he spent much of his 

 leisure on board the Rattlesnake in making out the 

 Italian with the aid of a dictionary, and in this way 

 came to know the beauties of the Divina Commedia. 

 On the other hand, it was a scientific interest which 

 led him in later life to take up his Greek, though 

 one use he put it to was to read Homer in the 

 original. 



Though he was a great novel-reader, and, as he 

 grew older, would always have a novel ready to take 

 up for a while in the evening, his chief reading, in 

 German and French as well as English, was philosophy 

 and history. 



His recreations were, as a rule, literary, and con- 

 sisted in a change of mental occupation. The only 

 times I can remember his playing an outdoor game 

 are in the late sixties, when he started his elder 

 children at cricket on the common at Littlehampton, 

 and in 1871 when he played golf at St. Andrews. 

 When first married, he promised his wife to reserve 

 Saturday afternoons for recreation, and constantly 

 went with her to the Ella concerts. About 1861 she 

 urged him to take exercise by joining Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer at racquets ; but the pressure of work before 

 long absorbed all his time. In his youth he was 

 extremely fond of chess, and played eagerly with his 

 fellow-students at Charing Cross Hospital or with his 

 messmates on board the Rattlesnake. But after he 



