with that restrained humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated.  With delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings.  Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah.  It was a triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded Leonard Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy gave him opportunity for an exquisite passage.  And then he told how a friend—­his good taste did not suffer him more than to hint subtly who the friend was with such gracious fancies—­had laid a laurel wreath on the dead poet’s heart; and the beautiful dead hands had seemed to rest with a voluptuous passion upon Apollo’s leaves, fragrant with the fragrance of art, and more green than jade brought by swart mariners from the manifold, inexplicable China.  And, an admirable contrast, the article ended with a description of the middle-class, ordinary, prosaic funeral of him who should have been buried like a prince or like a pauper.  It was the crowning buffet, the final victory of Philistia over art, beauty, and immaterial things.

Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better.  It was a miracle of charm, grace, and pity.  He printed all Cronshaw’s best poems in the course of the article, so that when the volume appeared much of its point was gone; but he advanced his own position a good deal.  He was thenceforth a critic to be reckoned with.  He had seemed before a little aloof; but there was a warm humanity about this article which was infinitely attractive.

LXXXVI

In the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the out-patients’ department, became an in-patients’ clerk.  This appointment lasted six months.  The clerk spent every morning in the wards, first in the men’s, then in the women’s, with the house-physician; he wrote up cases, made tests, and passed the time of day with the nurses.  On two afternoons a week the physician in charge went round with a little knot of students, examined the cases, and dispensed information.  The work had not the excitement, the constant change, the intimate contact with reality, of the work in the out-patients’ department; but Philip picked up a good deal of knowledge.  He got on very well with the patients, and he was a little flattered at the pleasure they showed in his attendance on them.  He was not conscious of any deep sympathy in their sufferings, but he liked them; and because he put on no airs he was more popular with them than others of the clerks.  He was pleasant, encouraging, and friendly.  Like everyone connected with hospitals he found that male patients were more easy to get on with than female.  The women were often querulous and ill-tempered.  They complained bitterly of the hard-worked nurses, who did not show them the attention they thought their right; and they were troublesome, ungrateful, and rude.