1873 BUENEY PEIZE 9 



ness and incessant lassitude, but struggled on, going 

 up to Scotland in the summer and beginning to 

 shoot, under the belief that all he wanted was hard 

 exercise. At last he broke down and was declared to 

 be suffering from a bad attack of typhoid fever. He 

 had a very hard struggle for life, and owed a great 

 deal to Dr. Latham, who from Cambridge kept up a 

 constant telegraphic communication with the Eoss- 

 shire doctors. It was a long and weary convales- 

 cence, beguiled in part by writing an essay on 

 ' Christian Prayer and Greneral Laws,' the subject 

 assigned for the Burney Prize Essay of 1873. 



Much of this essay was dictated to one or other of 

 his sisters, and it is a curious fact that his first book 

 and his last should have been on theological subjects. 

 Both were written when he was struggling with great 

 bodily weakness, and in these months of early man- 

 hood he showed the same almost pathetic desire to 

 work, the same activity of thought which he displayed 

 more than twenty years later in the last days of his life. 



The essay was successful, and its author was more 

 than once claimed as a champion of faith on the 

 strength of it. 



It is a very hard bit of reading, and of course has 

 to some extent the drawback ota prize essay, a work 

 written not simply to convince the public, but to 

 impress examiners. It is full of knowledge and of 

 intellectual agility, but is perhaps needlessly difficult 

 in style. His success was absolutely unexpected by 

 his family, and made him very happy, as the foUowing 

 letters show, written in the first glow of success. 



To Mrs. Bomanes. 



18 Cornwall Terrace. 



My dearest Mother, — Your letter of surprise and 

 rejoicing has been to me one of the best parts of the 



