There was no lack of glowing prophecies about his future. The only doubt was whether the Lord Chancellorship or the post of Prime Minister would more attract his genius. Nobody supposed that he would stay on at Cambridge. But he did. A few years after taking his degree he published a monumental edition of a Greek classic, which is still one of the fountain-heads of authority, even amongst the severe scholars of the Fatherland. And after that there was an end of him. Nobody quite knew what had happened to him, and as the years rolled on fewer and fewer cared to inquire. He went to hall, he sat silent in the Combination-room, he withdrew himself gradually from all intercourse with friends. His whole appearance changed, he became dishevelled, his face grew old and wrinkled, and his hair turned grey before his time. And thus dwindling and shrinking he had come to be the pitiable shadow who, as I have related, faded dismally across the College Court before a knot of cheerful Undergraduates on an October morning many years ago. What was the reason? I have often wondered. Did his labours over his book displace by a hair's-breadth some minute particle of matter in his brain? Or was there in his nature a lack of the genuine manly fibre, unsuspected even by himself until he felt himself fatally recoiling from the larger life of which the triumphs seemed to be within his grasp, if only he would stretch out his hand and seize them? I know not. Somebody once hinted that there was a woman at the bottom of it. There may have been, but it is a canon of criticism to reject the easier solution. When he died a few years ago, it appeared to be a shock to all but a few to remember that he had not died ages before.