Shakespeare and Spenser introduced him to the region of the spirit in its highest and deepest, its purest and noblest forms.
Unhappily he also fell in with Byron, the worst poet that can come into the hands of a boy, and always retained for him an admiration which would now be thought excessive.

By these means he gained much.
He discovered what poetry was, what history was, and he learned also the lesson that no one can teach, the hard lesson of self-reliance.
This was the period, as everybody knows, of the Oxford Movement, in which Hurrell Froude acted as a pioneer.

Hurrell's ideal was the Church of the Middle Ages represented by Thomas Becket.

In the vacations he brought some of his Tractarian friends home with him, and Anthony listened to their talk.

Strange talk it seemed.