late Dr. Fowler (an old schoolfellow of
Brown's, afterwards President of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor of the
University). Mr. Irwin quotes another old friend, Archdeacon Moore, to
much the same effect. Their explanations lack something of definiteness.
After a few terms of private pupils Brown returned to the Island, and
there accepted the office of Vice-principal of his old school. We can
only be sure that his reasons were honourable, and sufficed for him; we
may include among them, if we choose, that _nostalgia_ which haunted him
all his days, until fate finally granted his wish and sent him back to his
beloved Argos "for good."

In the following year (1857) he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter
of Dr. Stowell, of Ramsay; and soon after left King William's College to
become 'by some strange mischance' Head Master of the Crypt School,
Gloucester. Of this "Gloucester episode," as he called it, nothing needs
to be recorded except that he hated the whole business and, incidentally,
that one of his pupils was Mr. W. E. Henley--destined to gather into his
_National Observer_, many years later, many blooms of Brown's last and not
least memorable efflorescence in poesy.

From Gloucester he was summoned, on a fortunate day, by Mr. Percival
(now Bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to Clifton
College, then a struggling new foundation, soon to be lifted by him into
the ranks of the great Public Schools. Mr. Percival wanted a man to take
the Modern Side; and, as fate orders these things, consulted the friend
reserved by fate to be his own successor at Clifton--Mr. Wilson (now Canon
of Worcester). Mr. Wilson was an old King William's boy; knew Brown, and
named him.

"Mr. Wilson having told me about him," writes the bishop, "I made an
appointment to see him in Oxford, and there, as chance would have it,
I met him standing at the corner of St. Mary's Entry, in a somewhat
Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to
keep himself still, and looking decidedly _volcanic_. We very soon
came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton
as my colleague at the beginning of the following Term; and, needless
to say, St. Mary's Entry has had an additional interest to me ever
since. Sometimes I have wondered, and it would be worth a good deal
to know, what thoughts were crossing through that richly-furnished,
teeming b