LITERARY WORK IN LONDON. 233 



He was shy, he was poor, he grudged the time which such 

 visits would consume ; but above all these considerations 

 there was the inherent dislike, constantly on the increase, 

 of being compelled to adopt the artificial manner of general 

 conversation. During these five years his social exercises 

 were strictly limited to occasional visits, mainly in the 

 daytime, to a few scientific friends, such as Edward Double- 

 day and Adam White, and to such a limited circle of 

 religious companions as straitly shared his own peculiar 

 convictions. He stayed at home at his study-table, writing, 

 drawing, or observing, every week-day, and on Sunday he 

 took no rest from his labours, for he usually preached one, 

 if not two, extempore sermons. The monotony of this 

 round of life was perhaps even more deleterious than its 

 severity. He gave himself no holidays of any description. 

 With the exception of a few days in the summer of 1850, 

 spent at Leamington in attendance upon the death-bed and 

 the funeral of a relative of Mrs. Gosse's, he was not out of 

 the neighbourhood of London, even for one day, from 

 August, 1846, until December, 185 1. His most- adven- 

 turous excursions had extended no further than Kew 

 Gardens, Hampstead Heath, and the Isle of Dogs. 



Such a strain could not be kept up indefinitely ; the 

 wonder was that his constitution sustained it so long. In 

 November he began to be the victim to persistent head- 

 ache, and early in December, after starting to go to the 

 British Museum one morning, he became violently ill, 

 and returned • home in a state of great depression and 

 alarm. His brain seemed to have suddenly collapsed, and 

 he supposed^ himself to be paralyzed ; but the doctors pro- 

 nounced the symptoms to be those of acute nervous 

 dyspepsia. They attributed the illness mainly to his seden- 

 tary existence, and they insisted that he should leave town 

 at once, and be much in the open air. He himself wrote : 



