one, and I have got to take very great pleasure in what you recommended me when we were together at F.,[346] the evening before I left you, our first summer, i.e. good books; and I feel [I] understand places in the Psalms in a way I never used to. I go back to Oxford with a determination to set to at Hebrew and the early Fathers, and to keep myself in as strict order as I can: a thing which I have been making ineffectual attempts at for some time, but which never once entered my head for a long time of my life….
‘“And now I must drop back to myself. I wish you would say anything to me that you think would do me good, however severe it may be. You must have observed many things very contemptible in me, but I know worse of myself, and shall be prepared for anything. I cannot help being afraid that I am still deceiving myself about my motives and feelings, and shall be glad of anything on which to steady myself.”
‘It is exceedingly interesting to trace in the Journal the actual working day by day of the feelings to which these letters refer. The following extract is, in effect, its opening:
‘“July 1, 1826.—I think it will be a better way to keep a Journal for a bit, as I find I want keeping in order about more things than reading. I am in a most conceited way, besides very ill-tempered and irritable. My thoughts wander very much at my prayers, and I feel hungry for some ideal thing of which I have no definite idea. I sometimes fancy that the odd bothering feeling which gets possession of me is affectation, and that I appropriate it because I think it a sign of genius: but it lasts too long, and is too disagreeable to be unreal.”
‘“July 5.—I do not know how it is, but it seems to me as if the consciousness of having capacities for happiness, with no objects to gratify them, seems to grow upon me, and puts me in a dreary way. Lord, have mercy upon me!”
‘These feelings continue occasionally to appear, assuming, more and more, a distinct and practical shape, till his return to Oxford in October, 1826 (the period when the Letters before quoted were written), when they gave rise to the following resolutions:
‘“I have been coming to a resolution, that as soon as I am
out of the reach of observation, I will begin a sort of monastic austere life, and do my best to chastise myself before the Lord; that I will attend Chapel regularly; eat little and plainly, drink as little wine as I can, consistently with the forms of society; keep the fasts of the Church, as much as I can, without ostentation; continue to get up at six in the winter; abstain from all unnecessary expenses, in everything; give all the money I can save in charity, or for the adorning of religion. That I will submit myself to the wishes of the [Provost?] as to one set over me by the Lord, but never give in to the will or opinion of anyone from idleness, or false shame, or want of spirit. That I will avoid society as much as I can, except those I can do good to, or from whom I may expect real advantage; and I will, in all my actions, endeavour to justify that high notion of my capabilities of which I cannot divest myself. That I will avoid all conversation on serious subjects, except with those whose opinions I revere, and content myself with exercising dominion over my own mind, without trying to influence others. The studies which I have prescribed to myself are Hebrew and Ante-Nicene Fathers….”
‘We extract the following philosophical reflections, taken from the Occasional Thoughts of about the same date, as similarly characteristic of the author’s steady and systematic procedure:
‘“Dec. 1, 7, and 17.—It is the object of our lives, by patient perseverance in a course of action prescribed to us, so to shape and discipline our desires that they may, through habit, be excited to the same degree by the objects which are presented to our understanding, as they would by nature, if we had senses to relish them; that is, that the degree of our appetites for these objects should so far exceed that which we feel for sensible objects, as the known value of the former exceeds that of the latter. The former field of existence is what I think St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke (Heb., vi. 19) of ‘that which is within the veil,’ into which Jesus Christ had gone before us: the veil signifying our unconsciousness, in spite of which, ‘by two immutable things, in which it was impossible that God should lie, we might have