Gently, most gently, on thy victim's head,
Consumption, lay thine hand. Let me decay,
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away,
And softly go to slumber with the dead.
And if 'tis true what holy men have said,
That strains angelic oft foretell the day
Of death, to those good men who fall thy prey,
O let the aerial music round my bed,
Dissolving sad in dying symphony,
Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear;
That I may bid my weeping friends good-bye,
Ere I depart upon my journey drear:
And smiling faintly on the painful past,
Compose my decent head, and breathe my last.
But in spite of depression and ill health, he was really happy at
Wilford, a village in the elbow of a deep gully on the Trent, and near
his well-beloved Clifton Woods. On the banks of the stream he would sit
for hours in a maze of dreams, or wander among the trees on summer
nights, awed by the sublime beauty of the lightning, and heedless of
drenched and muddy clothes.
Later in the summer it was determined that he should go to college after
all; and by the generosity of a number of friends (including Neville who
promised twenty pounds annually) he was able to enter himself for St.
John's College, Cambridge. In the autumn he left his legal employers,
who were very sorry to lose him, and took up quarters with a clergyman
in Lincolnshire (Winteringham) under whom he pursued his studies for a
year, to prepare himself thoroughly for college. His letters during this
period are mostly of a religious tinge, enlivened only by a mishap while
boating on the Humber when he was stranded for six hours on a sand-bank.
He had become quite convinced that his calling was the ministry. The
proper observance of the Sabbath by his younger brothers and sisters
weighed on his mind, and he frequently wrote home on this topic.
In October, 1805, we find him settled at last in his rooms at St.
John's, the college that is always dear to us as the academic home of
two very different undergraduates--William Wordsworth and Samuel Butler.
His rooms were in the rearmost court, near the cloisters, and
overlooking the famous Bridge of Sighs. His letters give us a pleasant
picture of his quiet rambles through the town, his solitary cups of tea
as he sat by the fire, and his disappointment in not being able to hear
his lecturers on account of his deafness. Most entertaining to any one
at all familiar with the life of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges is
his account of the thievery of his "gyp" (the manservant who makes the
bed, cares for the rooms, and attends to the wants of the students).
Poor Henry's tea, sugar, and handkerchiefs began to vanish in the
traditional way; but he was practical enough to buy a large padlock for
his coal bin.
But Henry's innocent satisfaction in having at last attained the haven
of his desires was not long of duration. In spite of ill health, his
tutors constrained him to enter for a scholarship examination in
December, and when the unfortunate fellow pleaded physical inability,
they dosed him with "strong medicines" to enable him to face the
examiners. After the ordeal he was so unstrung that he hurried off to
London to spend Christmas with his aunt.
The account of his year at college is very pitiful. His tutors were,
according to their lights, very kind; they relieved him as far as
possible from financial worries, but they did not have sense enough to
restrain him from incessant study. Even on his rambles he was always at
work memorizing Greek plays, mathematical theorems, or what not. In a
memorandum found in his desk his life was thus planned: "Rise at
half-past five. Devotions and walk till seven. Chapel and breakfast till
eight. Study and lectures till one. Four and a half clear reading. Walk
and dinner, and chapel to six. Six to nine reading. Nine to ten,
devotions. Bed at ten."
In the summer of 1806 his examiners ranked him the best man of his year,
and in mistaken kindness the college decided to grant him the unusual
compliment of keeping him in college through the vacation with a special
mathematical tutor, gratis, to work with him, mathematics being
considered his weakness. As his only chance of health lay in complete
rest during the holiday, this plan of spending the summer in study was
simply a death sentence. In July, while at work on logarithm tables, he
was overtaken by a sudden fainting fit, evidently of an epileptic
nature. The malady gained strength, aided by the weakness of his heart
and lungs, and he died on October 19, 1806.
Poor Henry! Surely no gentler, more innocent soul ever lived. His
letters are a golden treasury of earnest and solemn speculation. Perhaps
once a twelve-month he displays a sad little vein of pleasantry, but not
for long. Probably the light-hearted undergraduates about him found him
a very prosy, shabby, and mournful young man, but if one may judge by
the outburst of tributary verses published after his death he was
universally admired and respected. Let us close the story by a quotation
from a tribute paid him by a lady versifier:
If worth, if genius, to the world are dear,
To Henry's shade devote no common tear.
His worth on no precarious tenure hung,
From genuine piety his virtues sprung:
If pure benevolence, if steady sense,
Can to the feeling heart delight dispense;
If all the highest efforts of the mind,
Exalted, noble, elegant, refined,
Call for fond sympathy's heartfelt regret,
Ye sons of genius, pay the mournful debt!