‘… Now I proceed to vindicate my character from the unwarrantable aspersions you have been pleased to throw upon it. Be it known then that since the first of May I have read the four first books of Herodotus, three of Ethics, two of Thucydides, _Œdipus Tyrannus_, _Eumenides_, Ἱκέτιδες, and a book of Homer; and all this not carelessly, but with Scapula and Matthiæ. And though there are several posing places in the Æschylus and Herodotus with which I shall in course of time bother you, still upon the whole I flatter myself that in a short space I shall be at least equal to Peter Elmsley,[31] and I would advise you to prepare the examining masters for the reception of such a luminary…. My father, I must assure you, has received no favourable impression of your moral organisation from the injudicious exposure which you made in your last letter. But I will urge the matter no further; … the shortness of the time during which your ἐνέργεαι have been discontinued may not yet have allowed the annihilation of the ἕξις. I shall rest in hope that this timely admonition may awaken you to a sense of your duty, and reinstate your perceptions of the ἀληθὲς in their full vigour. “Thine by yea and nay, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him.”’ Mr. Keble was settled in 1825 as Curate in sole charge of Hursley, Hampshire. To the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, Aug. 16, 1825. ‘… _Suaviter ut nunc est inquam_: but it was not so with poor [Williams] in the packet, being that he was sick all the way from Portland Head to Plymouth Sound; and was so completely miserable that he would not be spoken to, and kept on groaning out that he would give all he ever expected in the world to be on shore. By this unfortunate circumstance he was prevented from seeing the sun rise over the watery element in the very act of “pillowing his chin upon an orient wave,” and from bearing testimony (which I can do) that there is nothing the least sublime in the mere fact of being out of sight of land, and having nothing but the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky. But what was most melancholy of all, he was unable to get a glimpse of all the glorious coast of the south promontory of Devonshire…. Next day we came upon Southampton, while it was under one of the most imposing magnificent effects possible: a rainbow, lost in a dark cloud which was raining as hard as it could pelt, was resting one of its ends on the woods: and the sun on the waters, and the spires, made the misty smoke that was rising up from the town, quite imposing and sentimental. However, my complacency was much alloyed by the tantalising sight of the beautiful yachts, with their glittering sails, skimming along in the breeze, which had just started up after the violent rain which had fallen, and the melancholy _Heu, non mea_ rushed on me with irresistible force.’ How well he loved a boat! He complains, in one entry of his Journal, that the thought of boats distracts him insufferably during his prayers.