He would sometimes say that he had wanted Dowden when they were young to give himself to creative art, and would talk of what he considered Dowden's failure in life.

Once after breakfast Dowden read us some chapters of the un- published "Life of Shelley, " and I who had made the "Prometheus Unbound" my sacred book was delighted with all he read.

"He will not trust his nature/' he would say, or "he is too much influenced by his in- feriors, " or he would praise "Renunciants, " one of Dowden's poems, to prove what Dowden might have written .