THE LIFE OF 



PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, F.R.S. 



CHAPTER I. 



CHILDHOOD. 

 18IO-1827. 



EARLY in the spring of 1807 a middle-aged gentleman 

 arrived in Worcester by the Bath coach, and pro- 

 ceeded to modest lodgings, where he was already well 

 known and highly respected. He was a man of a somewhat 

 rueful countenance, whose well-made, thread-bare clothes 

 indicated at the same time a certain past quality and an 

 obvious state of present impecuniosity. He was tall and 

 thin, his hair was prematurely whitening above a dark 

 complexion, and his grave and gentle features very rarely 

 relaxed into a smile. The simple wallet which comprised 

 all his worldly possessions contained, beside his slender 

 store of clothes and necessaries, little except a Bible, and 

 a Theocritus in Greek, which never quitted him, but 

 formed, at the darkest moments of his career, a gate of 

 instant exit from the hard facts of life into an idyllic world 

 of glowing pastoral antiquity. His one other and most 

 indispensable companion was a box, containing colours, 



B 



