I must say that I agree with this writer in thinking ‘Philip Aylwin’ to be the most impressive character in the story.  The most remarkable feature of the novel, indeed, is that, although ‘Philip Aylwin’ disappears from the scene so early, his opinions, his character, and his dreams are cast so entirely over the book from beginning to end that the novel might have been called Philip Aylwin.  I have a special interest in this character, because I knew the undoubted original of the character with a considerable amount of intimacy.  Without the permission of the author of Aylwin, I can only touch on outward traits—­the deep, spiritual life of this man is beyond me.  Although a very near relation, he was not, as has been so often surmised, the author’s father. [Footnote] He was a man of extraordinary learning in the academic sense of the word, and possessed still more extraordinary general knowledge.  He lived for many years the strangest kind of hermit life, surrounded by his books and old manuscripts.  His two great passions were philology and occultism.  He knew more, I think, of those strange writers discussed in Vaughan’s Hours with the Mystics than any other person—­including, perhaps, Vaughan himself; but he managed to combine with his love of Mysticism a deep passion for the physical sciences, especially astronomy.  He seemed to be learning languages up to almost the last year of his life.  His method of learning languages was the opposite of that of George Borrow, that is to say, he made great use of grammars; and when he died it is said that from four to five hundred treatises on grammar were found among his books.  He used to express great contempt for Borrow’s method of learning languages from dictionaries only.

[Footnote:  He was Mr. Watts-Dunton’s uncle—­Mr. James Orlando Watts.]

I do not think that any one connected with literature—­with the exception of Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Swinburne, my father, and Dr. R. G. Latham—­knew so much of him as I did.  His personal appearance was exactly like that of ‘Philip Aylwin,’ as described in the novel.  Although he never wrote poetry, he translated, I believe, a good deal from the Spanish and Portuguese poets.  I remember that he was an extraordinary admirer of Shelley.  His knowledge of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists was a link between him and Mr. Swinburne.

At a time when I was a busy reader at the British Museum Reading-Room, I used frequently to see him, and he never seemed to know any one among the readers except myself, and whenever he spoke to me it was always in a hushed whisper, lest he should disturb the other readers, which in his eyes would have been a heinous offence.  For very many years he had been extremely well known to the second-hand booksellers, for he was a constant purchaser of their wares.  He was a great pedestrian, and, being very much attached to the north of London, would take long, slow tramps ten miles out in the direction of Highgate, Wood Green,