And Gillespie spoke the truth. Gradually, as Dick got to see more of the Born Poet's method, he found Gillingham out; he discovered that the great genius was essentially a _poseur_. He posed about everything. His _rôle_ in life, he said himself, was to be the typical poet; and he never forgot it. He dressed the part; he acted it; he ate and drank poetically. He looked at everything from the point of view of a budding Shakespeare, with just a dash of Shelley thrown in, and a suspicion of Matthew Arnold to give modern flavour. Add a tinge of Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Ibsen, for cosmopolitan interest, and you have your bard complete. He was a spectator of the drama of human action, he loved to remark; he watched the poor creatures and the pretty creatures at their changeful game--doing, loving, and suffering. He saw in it all good material for his art, the raw stuff for future plays to astonish humanity. Meanwhile, he lay low at Durham College, Oxford, and let the undergraduate world deploy itself before him in simple Bacchic guise or Heraclean feats of strength and skill. Dick saw more of Gillespie those first few terms than of anyone else in college. He was a thorough good fellow, Archibald Gillespie, and he had just enough of that ballast of common-sense and knowledge of the world which was a trifle lacking to the romantic country-bred lad fresh up from Chiddingwick. He helped Dick much with his work, and went much with him on the river. And Dick worked with a will at his history all that year, and pulled an oar with the best of them; though he found time, too, to coach a fellow-undergraduate going in for 'Smalls,' which increased his income by ten whole pounds--an incredible sum to him. When he thought of how hard it used to be to earn ten pounds at Mr. Wells's in the High Street at Chiddingwick, no wonder Oxford seemed to him a veritable Eldorado. In spite of hard work, however, and frequent tight places, that first term at Oxford was a genuine delight to him. Who that has known it does not look back upon his freshman year, even in middle life, with regretful enjoyment? Those long mornings in great lecture-rooms, lighted up with dim light from stained-glass windows; those golden afternoons on the gleaming river or among the fields towards Iffey; those strolls round the leafy avenues of Christ Church walks; those loitering moments in Magdalen cloisters! What lounging in a punt under the chestnuts by the Cherwell; what spurts against the stream on the river by Godstow! All, all is delightful to the merest full-blooded boy; to Richard Plantagenet's romantic mind, stored with images of the past, 'twas a perpetual feast of fantastic pleasure.