xxxii MEMOIR. 



In the last passage the writer did himself some 

 injustice, and what he seems to have taken for 

 "incorrigible idleness," was in reality nothing else 

 than the demand of nature within him for some 

 real rest and relaxation from his Oxford studies. 

 His scrupulous conscientiousness, moreover, was 

 already beginning to cause him much anxiety with 

 regard to his future life, as the time for his leaving 

 Oxford was approaching. That warning voice of 

 nature, however, unhappily was not attended to. 

 He would have entered the Schools for his final 

 examination the succeeding autumn, or at latest 

 the following spring ; but in the latter part of the 

 summer of this year (1864), under the strain of 

 overwork, his health broke completely down, and 

 for a period of some years he was obliged to live in 

 a state of enforced, and to him scarcely endurable, 

 inactivity. A great portion of this time he spent in 

 the retired parts of Wales, and the English Lake 

 District, and some part of it in Ireland. On one 

 occasion, during this period, writing to one of 

 his brothers on his experiences of overwork, he 

 says : — 



" Let me advise you earnestly not to try to do 

 too many things. I killed the goose with a vengeance, 

 and got no golden egg. I was expecting in a few 

 weeks [when taken ill] a degree with honours, and 

 a good start in life, and . . . had to leave Oxford 



