Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/37

Rh result was that for the time it seriously distressed his parents and his friends, especially Dr. Arnold, who had looked forward to his achieving great distinction, and whose well-known dislike of the Tractarian movement made him doubly grieve at what he regarded as indirectly one of its consequences. Clough himself seems always to have felt a solid confidence in his own powers, and perhaps to have too little regarded the outward means of displaying them. Perhaps, too, he was somewhat conscious of that inaptitude to put himself forward to the best advantage, which many of his friends have noticed, and accepted it with his usual stoic philosophy. At any rate his failure did not long produce the effects he most feared, of want of pupils; for through Dr. Arnold's kindness he was soon provided with profitable employment in teaching a number of Rugby boys who were kept at home at Liverpool by the breaking out of fever in the school. During this time he stayed at home with his family. In the autumn he returned to Oxford, and tried for a fellowship at Balliol. In this he was unsuccessful. He continued, however, to reside at Oxford, and supported himself on the exhibition and scholarship which he still held. In the spring of 1842 he was elected fellow of Oriel, which was in every way a great and cheering success to him. It healed the disappointment which his former failure and the judgment of others on it had caused, and seemed to give him a new life. It is clear by this determination of his to abide by Oxford and to seek his career and his living there, that he had as yet formed no definite views at variance with the principles of the Church. He had come, we believe, to see the unimportance of many things commonly insisted on; his intellect could no longer accept the ordinary formulas of religious opinion; but he was not provided with any other scheme to set up; his habits and his affections all clung to the old ways; then and many years afterwards, he continued to feel that real liberality, width of view, and mental and moral