life." This was the simple farewell which closed an intimacy that had done much to cheer and comfort Houghton when the loss of his wife, the marriage of his daughters, the burning of Fryston had turned his happy life to gloom.
At this time his own health was breaking, and he had received a warning which he perfectly understood. He had always felt deeply ; he was άρτίδακρνς, and was as easily moved by things great and good as by sorrow. But in regard to himself he was tranquil. Neither increasing infirmities, nor the certainty of impending death subdued his spirit. He insisted on writing my name on a book that he borrowed, and explained that he might, at any moment, be carried off in a fit. He became anxious not to be left alone, clinging to his friends, and especially to his sister, Lady Galway, who devoted herself to watching over him in the declining years. Mr. Wemyss Reid found him very ill one day, and asked what was the matter. "Death," he answered gravely ; "that is what is the matter with me. I am going to die." And then his face was illumined by a smile of serene resignation. The end for which he had been preparing came, as he I expected, swiftly, in August 1885.
He was accustomed to describe his career as an unsuccessful one, and loved to be thought a failure. But as a poet he attained his full stature very early, and turned away satisfied with his work.[1] He lived long enough to know that the one thing for which nils many faculties and virtues unfitted him was power. He had cultivated too attentively the art of being misunderstood, and it was not easy to defend effectively a man so easy to misrepresent. Drudgery, pretentious commonplace, dense prejudice, invincible dulness, which make up the larger half of average politics, were things which no middle-age training could ever render tolerable to a mind fed daily on every refinement and every exotic. If he wished for
- ↑ I was once dining at a party with him and Tennyson, when, turning to me and pointing to the poet, he said, "Ah ! a great deal of him will live for ever, and so will some of me" (Ed., Nineteenth Century).
