But he was never idle unless when
suffering. He had at this time commenced a work,--an Encyclopedia
Ecclesiastica, as he called it,--on which he laboured to the moment
of his death. It was his ambition to describe all ecclesiastical
terms, including the denominations of every fraternity of monks
and every convent of nuns, with all their orders and subdivisions.
Under crushing disadvantages, with few or no books of reference,
with immediate access to no library, he worked at his most ungrateful
task with unflagging industry. When he died, three numbers out
of eight had been published by subscription; and are now, I fear,
unknown, and buried in the midst of that huge pile of futile
literature, the building up of which has broken so many hearts.
And my father, though he would try, as it were by a side wind, to
get a useful spurt of work out of me, either in the garden or in
the hay-field, had constantly an eye to my scholastic improvement.
From my very babyhood, before those first days at Harrow, I had to
take my place alongside of him as he shaved at six o'clock in the
morning, and say my early rules from the Latin Grammar, or repeat
the Greek alphabet; and was obliged at these early lessons to hold
my head inclined towards him, so that in the event of guilty fault,
he might be able to pull my hair without stopping his razor or
dropping his shaving-brush.
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