rk, and boasts how he won the regard
of the clerk's Welsh wife by correctly pronouncing the magic name of
Machynlleth. He gave a great deal of time to his parishioners, to
consulting his churchwardens, to starting choirs, to managing classes
and parish expeditions. He could find time to attend a morning police
court when one of his boys got into difficulties, or to hold a midnight
service for the outcasts of the pavement.

When cholera broke out in Stepney in 1866, Green visited the sick and
dying in rooms that others did not dare to enter, and was not afraid to
help actively in burying those who had died of the disease. At holiday
gatherings he was the life and soul of the body, 'shocking two prim
maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring', and surprising his most
vigorous helpers by his energy and decision. On such occasions he
exhausted himself in the task of leadership, and he was no less generous
in giving financial help to every parish institution that was in need.

What hours he could snatch from these tasks he would spend in the
Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His
position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of
friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing
to a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a
precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons
the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds
that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the
patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins
to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become
abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I
am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come
to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000
costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of
work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the
nineteenth century.

Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on
historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or
another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset,
which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the
twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green
would contribute the archaeology and history. In m