Bishop Ryle, a good judge, has spoken to me of the young man's extraordinary facility at turning English poetry at sight into the most melodious Greek and Latin, and of the remarkable range of his scholarship.

He himself has told us of his love of port and bananas, his joy in early morning celebrations in the chapel of Pusey House, his tea-parties, his delight in debates at the Union, of which he became President, and of his many friendships with undergraduates of a witty and flippant turn of mind.
Like many effeminate natures, he was glad of opportunities to prove himself a good fellow.

In spite of no heel-taps when the port went round, he won the Hertford in 1907, the Ireland and Craven in 1908, and in 1910 took a first in Greats.
He became a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College for two years, then its Chaplain for five years, and, after leading a life of extravagant and fighting ritualism as an Anglican priest, at the end of that period, 1917, he retired from the Church of England and was received into the Church of Rome.
The consolations of Anglo-Catholicism, then, were insufficient for the spiritual needs of this scion of the Low Church.
What were those needs?
Were they, indeed, _spiritual_ needs, as he suggests by the title of his book _A Spiritual AEneid_, or _aesthetic_ needs, the needs of a temperament ?--a temperament which used wit and raillery chiefly as a shield for its shrinking and quivering emotions, emotions which we must take note of if we are to understand his secession.
He was at Eton when a fire occurred in one of the houses, two boys perishing in the flames.

He tells us that this tragedy made an impression on him, for it fell at a time in his life when "one begins to fear death." Fear is a word which meets us even in the sprightly pages of _A Spiritual AEneid_, a volume perhaps more fitly to be termed "An AEsthetic Ramp." He loved to dash out of college through the chill mists of a November morning to worship with "the few righteous men" of the University in the Chapel of Pusey House, which "conveyed a feeling, to me most gratifying, of catacombs, oubliettes, Jesuitry, and all the atmosphere of mystery that had long fascinated me." He tells us how his nature "craved for human sympathy and support," and speaks of the God whom he "worshipped, loved, and feared." He prayed for a sick friend with "both hands held above the level of my head for a quarter of an hour or more." He was a Universalist "recoiling from the idea of hell." He believed in omens, though he did not always take them, and was thoroughly superstitious.

"The name of Rome has always, for me, stood out from any printed page merely because its initial is that of my own name." "At the time of my ordination I took a private vow, which I always kept, never to preach without making some reference to Our Lady, by way of satisfaction for the neglect of other preachers." He was a youth when he took the vow of celibacy.