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CHAPTER VIII. 



LITERARY WORK IN LONDON. 

 1846— 185 I. 



THE record of the next two years is scanty. They 

 were spent in close retirement and in almost incessant 

 literary labour. Philip Gosse came back from Jamaica 

 considerably altered and matured ; from a belated youth 

 he had slipped rather suddenly into premature middle age. 

 The climate of the West Indies, his solitary conditions 

 there, coinciding with a period of life which is often critical, 

 had their effect upon his person and his temperament. It 

 may be well, at this point, to give some description of the 

 former, which underwent no further perceptible change for 

 many years. He was under middle size ; slight, and almost 

 slim, when he had left England, he returned from Jamaica 

 thick-set and heavy- limbed, troubled with a corpulence that 

 was not quite healthy. His face was large and massive, 

 extremely pallid, with great strength in the chin, and long, 

 tightly compressed lips ; decidedly grim in expression, but 

 lighted up by hazel eyes of extraordinary size and fulness. 

 These eyes, which have been compared (I suppose more 

 with regard to their luminous character than their shape) 

 with the eyes of Lord Beaconsfield, were the most obvious 

 peculiarity of the face, which was, nevertheless, chiefly 

 remarkable, to a careful observer, for the tense and exalted 

 nature of the expression it habitually wore. Nothing was 



