t at once decide to leave his official career. It
seemed to him at first that the abandonment of a chosen profession
ought not to depend upon the fact that one could live independently
without it; he felt that there ought to be a better reason for pursuing
a certain course of life than mere livelihood. But his accession of
means enabled Hugh to give up all literary hack-work, such as
reviewing, which had long been somewhat of a burden to him; he had
found himself of late agreeing more and more with William Morris's
doctrine, that there was something degrading in a man's printing his
opinions about other persons' books for money; and he now began to
indulge in more ambitious literary schemes. This involved him in a
good deal of reading; but he found himself thwarted at every turn by
the pressure of official business. He found that his reading had to be
done over and over again; that he would master a section of his
subject, and then for lack of time be compelled to put it aside, until
it had passed out of his mind and needed to be recovered.

At last he made up his mind that he would take the first obvious
opportunity that offered itself, to end his official work. It came in
the form of an offer which, a year or two before, would have gratified
his ambition, and which would have bound him without question to
official work for the rest of his active life; he was offered in very
complimentary terms the headship of a newly created department. He not
only declined it, to the surprise and disappointment of his chief, but
he resigned his appointment at the same time. He had a somewhat
painful interview with the head of the office, who told him that he was
sacrificing a brilliant and honourable career at the very moment when
it was opening before him. Hugh did not, however, hesitate; he found
it a difficult task to explain to his superior exactly what he intended
to do, who expressed a good-humoured contempt for the idea of making a
mild literary experiment, at an age when literary success seemed
unattainable. The great man, indeed, one of whose virtues was an easy
frankness, said that it seemed to him as absurd as if Hugh had
expressed the intention of devoting the rest of his life to practising
the piano or drawing in water-colours. Hugh was quite aware that his
literary position was of a dilettante kind, and that he had done
nothing to justify the hope that success in literature was within his
reach. He pleaded th