With her myriad blandishments, but could not win.
Who would fight for victory, but would not sin.
By these our elder brothers who have gone before,
And have left their trail of light upon our shore.
We can see the glory of a seeming shame,
We can feel the fulness of an empty name.”
It was recitations like this that formed the nucleus of the “incomparable evenings in the Doctor’s Study” to which Dr. Lillie Saville referred (see pp. 390-1, footnote). When life was not too exacting—and sometimes when it was—such evenings were very frequent, and they were a great refreshment after the burden and heat of the day.
She derived much relaxation, too, from the best of the unceasing current that flows through the circulating libraries. Her brief criticisms of books are often interesting. She was disappointed in George Eliot’s Life, because the long series of letters was not sufficiently welded together by narrative. Of the Carlyles she agreed with Mrs. Oliphant that “there was a great deal of love on both sides,—with very raw nerves.” Of two books she confessed to Miss Du Pre that she “sobbed over them like a baby,”—one was Laetus Sorte Mea, the other The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen.