YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 75 



two,' after a 'strange, heavy feeling in the head' from 

 overwork. Later, he says it is no use his going to London 

 to look for work, because it is a slack season and he is not 

 well off. He is writing short stories. He is now ' seri- 

 ously engaged to Miss Baden.' It had been a busy, 

 troubled year. Nothing was spared him except satiety 

 and resignation ; nothing was spared him that could in 

 the end tighten a string for the ripe music of his 

 maturity. 



In 1872 he was pretty fully employed by the local 

 papers, helping to fill their columns, and storing his 

 memory and note-books with his observations of agricul- 

 tural men and women, farming, the courts, Boards of 

 Guardians, and the landscape and architecture which he 

 passed on his walks to Wootton Bassett, Marlborough, 

 Malmesbury, or Wantage. He offered a novel called 

 ' Only a Girl' to Messrs. Longman during this year. He 

 was good enough as a writer for his editor to overlook his 

 shortcomings, as when he failed to give any account of a 

 Liberal meeting because it was ' such rot,' or preferred 

 a walk to an agricultural banquet. He kept up his archae- 

 ological curiosity. As early as 1869 he had written to 

 Rev. F. Goddard, of Hilmarton, saying that ' for some 

 years past ' he had been interested in the antiquities of the 

 neighbourhood, and asking for information concerning the 

 lineage and estates of the Goddard family. In 1872 he 

 was writing to H. N. Goddard, of Clyffe Pypard Manor, 

 about pedigrees and portraits of the Goddards ; a pedigree 

 of the Walronds ; a brass at Clyffe. He was reading 

 Hatcher's ' History of Salisbury,' and borrowed ' The 

 Monumental Brasses of England ' and ' Monumental 

 Brasses of Wiltshire ' from H. N. Goddard ; had 

 searched ' Domesday ' for Goddards, and was going to look 

 at ' Inquisitiones Post-mortem ' and ' Rotuli Hundred- 

 orum.' Near the end of the year, he wrote that he had 

 finished a history of Swindon, for which he had been col- 

 lecting material for ' ten or twelve years,' and was thinking 

 of publishing it. Part of it he had woven into a history 



