It was a hard struggle at first, for he found himself much poorer than he had imagined, and it seemed as though the ends could not possibly meet.

There was no question of denying himself luxuries; that would have been easy enough.

In those first months it was the necessities that he lacked, the coals for his little grate, the oil for his one small lamp.

But he fought bravely through it, having, like many another young fellow who has weathered the storms of poverty in pursuit of learning, an iron constitution, and an even stronger will.

He used to say long afterwards that feeling cold was a mere habit and that when one thoroughly understood the construction of Greek verses, some stimulus of physical discomfort was necessary to make the imagination work well; in support of which assertion he said that he had never done such good things by the comfortable fire in the study at Billingsfield vicarage as he did afterwards on winter nights by the light of a tallow candle, high up in Neville's Court.