For the rest, there are of course the neat little accounts of his birthplace, his parentage, his education, etc., etc., published with the list of his works in due order, with the engravings in the illustrated papers. But these tell us little of the real life of the man. Carlyle, in one of his finest passages, says that ‘A true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the greatest men; that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man’s life a strange emblem of every man’s; and that human portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls.’ And though I don’t profess to give a portrait, but merely a sketch, I will endeavour to sketch faithfully, and possibly in the future my work may fall into the hands of some of those worthy people who imagine that my friend leapt into fame at a bound, or of those comfortable mortals who seem to think that a novel is turned out as easily as water from a tap. There is, however, one thing I can never do:--I am quite unable to put into words my friend’s intensely strong feeling with regard to the sacredness of his profession. It seemed to me not unlike the feeling of Isaiah when, in the vision, his mouth had been touched with the celestial fire. And I can only hope that something of this may be read between my very inadequate lines. Looking back, I fancy Derrick must have been a clever child. But he was not precocious, and in some respects was even decidedly backward. I can see him now--it is my first clear recollection of him--leaning back in the corner of my father’s carriage as we drove from the Newmarket station to our summer home at Mondisfield. He and I were small boys of eight, and Derrick had been invited for the holidays, while his twin brother--if I remember right--indulged in typhoid fever at Kensington. He was shy and silent, and the ice was not broken until we passed Silvery Steeple. “That,” said my father, “is a ruined church; it was destroyed by Cromwell in the Civil Wars.” In an instant the small quiet boy sitting beside me was transformed. His eyes shone; he sprang forward and thrust his head far out of the window, gazing at the old ivy-covered tower as long as it remained in sight. “Was Cromwell really once there?” he asked with breathless interest. “So they say,” replied my father, looking with an amused smile at the face of the questioner, in which eagerness, delight, and reverence were mingled. “Are you an admirer of the Lord Protector?” “He is my greatest hero of all,” said Derrick fervently. “Do you think--oh, do you think he possibly can ever have come to Mondisfield?” My father thought not, but said there was an old tradition that the Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.