His Latin was so poor, and his Greek verse so vile, that all had been surprised when towards the finish of his career he showed a very considerable power of writing and speaking his own language.  He left school without a pang.  But when in the train he saw the old Hill and the old spire on the top of it fading away from him, a lump rose in his throat, he swallowed violently two or three times, and, thrusting himself far back into the carriage corner, appeared to sleep.

At Oxford, he was happier, but still comparatively lonely; remaining, so long as custom permitted, in lodgings outside his College, and clinging thereafter to remote, panelled rooms high up, overlooking the gardens and a portion of the city wall.  It was at Oxford that he first developed that passion for self-discipline which afterwards distinguished him.  He took up rowing; and, though thoroughly unsuited by nature to this pastime, secured himself a place in his College ‘torpid.’  At the end of a race he was usually supported from his stretcher in a state of extreme extenuation, due to having pulled the last quarter of the course entirely with his spirit.  The same craving for self-discipline guided him in the choice of Schools; he went out in ‘Greats,’ for which, owing to his indifferent mastery of Greek and Latin, he was the least fitted.  With enormous labour he took a very good degree.  He carried off besides, the highest distinctions of the University for English Essays.  The ordinary circles of College life knew nothing of him.  Not once in the whole course of his University career, was he the better for wine.  He, did not hunt; he never talked of women, and none talked of women in his presence.  But now and then he was visited by those gusts which come to the ascetic, when all life seemed suddenly caught up and devoured by a flame burning night and day, and going out mercifully, he knew not why, like a blown candle.  However unsocial in the proper sense of the word, he by no means lacked company in these Oxford days.  He knew many, both dons and undergraduates.  His long stride, and determined absence of direction, had severely tried all those who could stomach so slow a pastime as walking for the sake of talking.  The country knew him—­though he never knew the country—­from Abingdon to Bablock Hythe.  His name stood high, too, at the Union, where he made his mark during his first term in a debate on a ‘Censorship of Literature’ which he advocated with gloom, pertinacity, and a certain youthful brilliance that might well have carried the day, had not an Irishman got up and pointed out the danger hanging over the Old Testament.  To that he had retorted:  “Better, sir, it should run a risk than have no risk to run.”  From which moment he was notable.

He stayed up four years, and went down with a sense of bewilderment and loss.  The matured verdict of Oxford on this child of hers, was “Eustace Miltoun!  Ah!  Queer bird!  Will make his mark!”