Sometimes, in his dreams, he saw enacted the Greek tragedies, to the accompaniment of the organs of New College and the Cathedral. Now that he knew his plays by heart, he came oftener to Oxford, and gained the freedom of the Bodleian. Every day he came, bringing his own books to fill the interval before the library books arrived, although for the most part he stared at the gilt inscriptions outside his alcove window, or at the trees and roofs farther off. When he was hidden among the expected volumes he read but feverishly. He put questions to himself in the style of the schoolmen, and pondered “whether the music of the spheres be verse or prose.” He tingled all over with the learned air, and was intoxicated by the dust of a little-used book. The brown spray that fell from a volume on the shelf before him was sweeter than the south wind. Week after week obscured his aims. The only moments of his old chanting joy came to him in his still undiluted expectations, when he came in sight of the city-- O fortunati quorum jam mœnia surgunt!-- and at night, while the river shone like an infinite train let fall from the shoulders of the city. He sold his books in Little Clarendon Street, and whenever he wished to read, there he found them and others ready. Most of his time passed in the corner of an inn, where he sat at a hole in the dark window as at a hagioscope, and with heavy eyelids watched the University men. And it was possible to earn a living by selling the _Star_ for a penny, night after night, and to have the felicity of dying in Oxford. [Illustration: A “STUDY” IN THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY The window in the “study” looks south into the Fellows’ Garden of Exeter College. To the right, outside the picture, is the main aisle of the Library, shown in another drawing, and to the extreme left is a glimpse of the cross aisle leading to the staircase entrance to the Library, the columns supporting the galleries, and the ancient timbered roof. Beneath the coloured bust of Sir Thomas Sackville, and on the screen forming one side of the “study,” are placed rare portraits of distinguished persons, and “drawings” by old masters, etc. In the showcase fixed over the specimen-drawers are books, relics, autographs, etc., and objects of great value and antiquity. ] THE PAST I