conversation which once took place between my father and himself :

I

Neither your father nor I had spoken for some time when the former said, "What's worrying you, you've something on your mind? hastened to deny it, but said that for a long time past I had wished to put a certain question to him, but had lacked the courage. He at once became all attention and replied, "Fire away.' So I put my question.

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"Do you believe in the Divinity of Christ?" At once came the retort, "I don't know what you mean. Well," I continued, "it is the usual way of expressing it." He was so long before he spoke again that I feared I had offended him and that the subject was distasteful. At length he took his pipe from his mouth and looking at me asked, "Do you remember sufficient of your Greek to differentiate between éκ and ȧπò? Before I could reply in the negative, he proceeded: "In my view Christ was ἀπὸ and not ἐκ θεοῦ. Certain it is that we shall never look on His like again, and that if you model your life on His you can't go wrong. ." Then getting up he put his hand kindly on my shoulder and said, "Don't worry over the future state. It only brings great mental distress. We have all passed through that stage. If you go through life doing your duty towards your neighbour you won't go far wrong. For this is the first, the last, and the great commandment."

CHAPTER XV

HIS ROBUST CONSTITUTION-HIS LOVE OF AND CAPACITY FOR WORK-HIS ONE AILMENT: ITS FEATURES: THE OPEN AIR BATH CURE

IS general health was so good and so robust that he was never laid up.

H

A

complete loss of voice owing to a cold once or twice kept him indoors, spraying his throat all day with a solution, but otherwise he never missed a single lecture through ill health.

The number of lectures that he delivered cannot have been less than 10,000, often five in a day. It must not be forgotten, too, that all these lectures entailed essays from the students on the subject of the discourse, and not the least part of his work was the perusal of scores and scores of papers through the week, all of which he corrected and marked himself.

And he may truly be said to have revelled in his work. He hardly knew the meaning of the word "tired." He would come home after a hard day's work about eleven o'clock, comparatively quite fresh, have some tea and start his writing till two, three, or four in the morning; or if not

writing, solid reading. In this way he got through a great deal of work. There were not only the innumerable articles which he was continually engaged on, but books which he was either writing or editing. Most of his books involved an enormous amount of labour, though perhaps not so much as many of his readers would imagine, owing to his exceptional memory. But it was when he was not quite sure of his memory that the trouble often began; for he would spare no time or pains to verify a statement. He would sometimes say to me, "Would you mind going to the Museum and finding this passage it occurs in the works of obscure author. I would then wade through volume after volume of this obscure author to find perhaps one line. He was, so far as I can remember, never at fault, and delighted when it was found. But, generally, this labour too he reserved for himself. Nothing was too much trouble for him-he thoroughly enjoyed it, as he enjoyed life.1

some

But if he usually enjoyed life, he was not always free from ailments. His great trouble was his depression." This probably arose from two causes, first, Indigestion, which he continually

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1 As the year of Robert Greene's birth is doubtful, he ransacked the registers of forty-two churches in Norwich to find the entry of his baptism, and found it.

HIS ONE AILMENT

233

suffered from in a slight form, and secondly, by far the main cause the strenuous life which he led.

Judging from his case, it would appear extremely difficult to overtax a sound intellect; for though he seemed to be constitutionally unable to give his brain more than five or six hours' rest in the twenty-four, and though the amount of work which he compelled it to do during the rest of the day and night is almost incredible, yet his marvellous memory and clear intellect remained unimpaired to the end. The same cannot be said of the nervous system generally. This depression he had suffered from, on and off, all through his life, and as it was practically his only ailment, and as it presented some features that were not without a certain strangeness, I may perhaps be pardoned for dwelling on it a little. Although the primary cause of the malady may have lain in his strenuous life, the direct occasions were as mysterious to him as they were to everyone else. A particularly hard piece of work would not always be a cause. Even a great disappointment would not necessarily set it up. The fact was, that the depression was purely physical, wholly capricious, and merely accentuated by a disappointment, or stress of hard work. He would say, "I have had a touch' of my old trouble again. I hope I shall be able

to throw it off." If he were well, and had had no particular mental strain or worry, the depression, after hovering about for a few days, would disappear. But just as a person when he is "run down," is more likely to contract a disease, and especially a disease against which his system happens to possess the least resisting power, so he, after a severe strain or disappointment, left himself more open to the attack of his old enemy. Its duration lasted usually according to its severity-the worst lasting the longest. Sometimes it continued for months practically on end, and would be quite unnoticed by outsiderscertainly he often had a wonderful facility for forgetting it when his mind was occupied by something that interested him. He would sometimes say, "I really don't feel I have the strength to lecture to-day-my brain doesn't seem up to it." He would go feeling utterly broken. In about three minutes after the commencement of the lecture, the worn look would pass away, in five minutes he was completely absorbed in his subject-depression, for the time at least, had entirely gone. On another occasion, when he was suffering from a severe attack, a visitor suddenly called a friend from abroad whom he had not seen for years-the depression suddenly left himin a few minutes he was laughing and chatting