d have borne in hands so pure, touched
him from first to last, and till his eyes were finally closed on this
world, only, again, as a thing immeasurable, surely not meant for the
like of him; its high claims, to which no one could be equal; its
reproaches. He would scarcely have proposed to "enter into" [219] such
matters; was constitutionally shy of them. His submissiveness, you see,
was a kind of genius; made him therefore, of course, unlike those
around him; was a secret; a thing, you might say, "which no one
knoweth, saving he that receiveth it."

Thus repressible, self-restrained, always concurring with the
influence, the claim upon him, the rebuke, of others, in the bustle of
school life he did not count even with those who knew him best, with
those who taught him, for the intellectual capacity he really had. In
every generation of schoolboys there are a few who find out, almost for
themselves, the beauty and power of good literature, even in the
literature they must read perforce; and this, in turn, is but the
handsel of a beauty and power still active in the actual world, should
they have the good fortune, or rather, acquire the skill, to deal with
it properly. It has something of the stir and unction--this
intellectual awaking with a leap--of the coming of love. So it was
with Uthwart about his seventeenth year. He felt it, felt the
intellectual passion, like the pressure outward of wings within him--he
pterou dynamis,+ says Plato, in the Phaedrus; but again, as some do
with everyday love, withheld, restrained himself; the status of a
freeman in the world of intellect can hardly be for him. The sense of
intellectual ambition, ambitious thoughts such as sweeten the toil of
some of those about him, [220] coming to him once in a way, he is
frankly recommended to put them aside, and acquiesces; puts them from
him once for all, as he could do with besetting thoughts and feelings,
his preferences, (as he had put aside soft thoughts of home as a
disobedience to rule) and with a countenance more good-humoured than
ever, an absolute placidity. It is fit he should be treated sparingly
in this matter of intellectual enjoyment. He is made to understand
that there is at least a score of others as good scholars as he. He
will have of course all the pains, but must not expect the prizes, of
his work; of his loyal, incessant, cheerful industry.

But only see him as he goes. It is as if he left music, delightfully
t