In his view, as it seemed to me, there were two attitudes of mind towards dogmatic forms--the one impatient of form because form was never adequate to express the whole truth, the other impatient of form[74] because impatient of the truth itself. These two attitudes of mind were poles asunder; they must never be confused together. I may be allowed to illustrate this discriminating spirit by one or two reminiscences. I once asked him whether they were right who interpreted the three ladies who accompanied King Arthur on his last voyage as Faith, Hope, and Charity. He replied with a touch of (shall I call it?) intellectual impatience: "They do and they do not. They are those graces, but they are much more than those. I hate to be tied down to say, 'This means that,' because the thought in the image is much more than the definition suggested or any specific interpretation advanced." The truth was wider than the form, yet the form was a shelter for the truth. It meant this, but not this only; truth must be able to transcend any form in which it may be presented. Hence he could see piety under varying forms: for example, he described those who were "pious variers from the Church." This phrase, it may here be related, had a remarkable influence on one man's life, as the following letter, written by a clergyman who had formerly been a Nonconformist, will show. The writer died some few years ago; two of his sons are now good and promising clergymen of the Church of England: OXFORD VILLAS, GUISELEY, LEEDS, _January 16, 1901_. MY LORD BISHOP--In reference to your volume on the Poets, may I intrude upon your attention one moment to say that it was Tennyson's phrase in reference to dissenters: Pious variers from the Church, in his "Sea Dreams" that first kindled me to earnest thought (some twenty years since) as to my own position in relationship to the Church of the land. The force that moved me lay in the word "pious." Were dissenters more pious than Church people? I regret to say I thought them much less so; and as this conviction deepened I was compelled to make the change for which I am every day more thankful.--I am, my Lord Bishop, your Lordship's devoted servant, W. HAYWARD ELLIOTT.