g like
vindictiveness--which is certainly not philosophical, whatever else it
was. But his intellectual faculties were too strong to let him feed on
the poison of a reactionary antipathy to a deserted faith. Puseyism, as
he says, dropped away from him for lack of nutrition of the religious
brain,--which perhaps at the best was more like an artificial limb than
a natural organ in a man of Pattison's constitution. For some five years
he was inspired by a new and more genuine enthusiasm--for forming and
influencing the minds of the young. He found that he was the possessor
of what, for lack of a better name, he calls a magnetic power in dealing
with the students, and his moral ascendency enabled him to make Lincoln
the best managed college in Oxford.

From 1848 to 1851 he describes his absorption in the work of the college
as complete. It excluded all other thoughts. In November that incident
occurred which he calls the catastrophe of his life. The headship of the
college fell vacant, and for several weeks he was led to believe that
this valuable prize was within his grasp. At first the invincible
diffidence of his nature made it hard for him to realise that exaltation
so splendid was possible. But the prospect once opened, fastened with a
fatally violent hold upon his imagination. The fellows of Lincoln
College, who were the electors, were at that time a terribly degraded
body. The majority of them were no more capable of caring for
literature, knowledge, education, books, or learning than Squire Western
or Commodore Trunnion. One of them, says Pattison, had been reduced by
thirty years of the Lincoln common-room to a torpor almost childish.
Another was 'a wretched _cretin_ of the name of Gibbs, who was always
glad to come and booze at the college port a week or two when his vote
was wanted in support of college abuses.' The description of a third,
who still survives, is veiled by editorial charity behind significant
asterisks. That Pattison should be popular with such a gang was
impossible. Such an Alceste was a standing nuisance and reproach to the
rustic Acastes and Clitandres of the Lincoln bursary. They might have
tolerated his intellect and overlooked his industry, if his intellect
and his industry had not spoiled his sociability. But irony and the _ars
tacendi_ are not favourite ingredients in the boon companion. Pattison
never stayed in the common-room later than eight in the evening, and a
man was no better than