Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/53

Rh face to face with the question whether he ought to resign his tutorship. After a correspondence with the head of his college—in speaking of whom he always expressed a strong sense of the uniform kindness which he had received from him under these trying circumstances—he eventually gave up his tutorship in 1 848; and this done, though his fellowship had not yet expired, he began to feel his whole position hollow; and six months later (in October 1848), he resigned this likewise, and thus left himself unprovided with any present means of making a livelihood, and with the burden of the annuity to which we have alluded still hanging on him. The sacrifice was greater to him than to many men, because he had no natural aptitude for making money.. His power of literary production was always uncertain, and very little within his own control. His conscientious scruples interfered with his writing casually, as many would have done; for instance, we are told that he would not contribute to any paper or review with whose general principles he did not agree. He was, therefore, constrained to look out for some definite post in the line of education; and from the best chances in this department he had cut himself adrift by resigning his fellowship. He did, nevertheless, take this step, apparently with a certain lightness of heart and buoyancy, in singular contrast with what might be expected to be the feeling of a man taking a decision so important to his future life. It is clear that he 'broke away with delight' from what he felt to be the thraldom of his position in Oxford.

Immediately after laying down his tutorship, he made use of his leisure to go to Paris, in company with Emerson, where he spent a month in seeing the sights of the Revolution.

It was in September of this year (1848), when staying at home with his mother and sister in Liverpool, that he wrote his first long poem, the 'Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.' This was his utterance to the world on quitting Oxford, and not the theological pamphlet which was expected from him. In later