Its possession brought with it the realisation of a paramount
desire, the desire for Greece and Italy which had become for him, as it had
once been with Goethe, a scarce endurable suffering. The sickness of
longing had wellnigh given way to despair, when 'there came into my hands a
sum of money (such a poor little sum) for a book I had written. It was
early autumn. I chanced to hear some one speak of Naples--and only death
would have held me back.'[10]
[Footnote 10: See _Emancipated_, chaps. iv.-xii.; _New Grub Street_, chap,
xxvii.; _Ryecroft_, Autumn xix.; the short, not superior, novel called
_Sleeping Fires_, 1895, chap. i. 'An encounter on the Kerameikos'; _The
Albany_, Christmas 1904, p. 27; and _Monthly Review_, vol. xvi. 'He went
straight by sea to the land of his dreams--Italy. It was still happily
before the enterprise of touring agencies had fobbed the idea of Italian
travel of its last vestiges of magic. He spent as much time as he could
afford about the Bay of Naples, and then came on with a rejoicing heart to
Rome--Rome, whose topography had been with him since boyhood, beside whose
stately history the confused tumult of the contemporary newspapers seemed
to him no more than a noisy, unmeaning persecution of the mind.
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