He used, I remember, to warn us against attempting too close an analysis of character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man, the intuitive instinct which impelled him, his _attack_ upon experience, was a thing almost independent both of his circumstances and of his reason. He used to take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and say that a box full of thread and a loom made up a very small part of the process. It was the inventive instinct of the craftsman, the faculty of designing, that was all-important. He himself was a man of large designs, but he lacked perhaps the practical gift of embodiment. I looked upon him as a man of high poetical powers, with a great range of hopes and visions, but without the technical accomplishment which lends these their final coherence. He was fully aware of this himself, but he neither regretted it nor disguised it. The truth was that his interest in existence was so intense, that he lacked the power of self-limitation needed for an artistic success. What, however, he gave to all who came in touch with him, was a strong sense of the richness and greatness of life and all its issues. He taught us to approach it with no preconceived theories, no fears, no preferences. He had a great mistrust of conventional interpretation and traditional explanations. At the same time he abhorred controversy and wrangling. He had no wish to expunge the ideals of others, so long as they were sincerely formed rather than meekly received. Though I have come myself to somewhat different conclusions, he at least taught me to draw my own inferences from my own experiences, without either deferring to or despising the conclusions of others. The charm of his personality lay in his independence, his sympathy, his eager freshness of view, his purity of motive, his perfect simplicity; and it is all this which I have attempted to depict, rather than to trace his theories, or to present a philosophy which was always concrete rather than abstract, and passionate rather than deliberate. To use a homely proverb, Father Payne was a man who filled his chair!