When or how Pater began to form the design of _Marius the Epicurean_ is not known. I cannot help doubting whether it was at first intended to be so large a work. His method of working was so elaborate, so deliberate, that he preferred shorter studies, episodes rather than continuous narrative. The year 1878 had been a more or less busy year. _The Child in the House_ had appeared, and he had written three other studies; but he fell into a long silence. In 1879 nothing appeared from his pen. In 1880 two short Greek Studies were all that he published; in 1881 and 1882 he published nothing; in 1883 came the little study of Rossetti, published as an introduction in Ward’s _English Poets_. In 1884 he published nothing; and at last in 1885 appeared _Marius the Epicurean_. It may be said that he gave up six years of his life, when his mental powers were at their strongest, to the preparation of this great book. He felt the strain imposed upon him by the size of the conception very severely; moreover, he realised that to execute a subject on so large a scale was not wholly consonant with the bent of his mind; thus he wrote to Miss Paget (Vernon Lee) in July 1883:— “I have hopes of completing one half of my present chief work—an Imaginary Portrait of a peculiar type of mind in the time of Marcus Aurelius, by the end of this vacation.... I am wishing to get the whole completed, as I have visions of many smaller pieces of work, the composition of which would be actually pleasanter to me. However, I regard this present matter as a sort of duty. For you know I think that there is a ... sort of religious phase possible for the modern mind, the conditions of which phase it is the main object of my design to convey.” So few personal hints are preserved of Pater’s feelings about any of his works that this statement, made in the very throes of his labour, has a peculiar interest. The motive of _Marius_ is the tracing of the history of a highly intellectual nature, with a deep religious bias, through various stages of philosophy to the threshold of Christianity; for it is impossible to resist the conviction that Marius, dying technically a Christian, his last moments soothed with Christian rites, would, if the creator of the book had decided to prolong his progress, have become a professed Christian.