The grace and harmony of style and versification which he
found particularly in the latter master became one of his favorite
themes, and he often dwelt upon this excellence. He loved to repeat the
sad old strains of Bion; and Aeschylus and Sophocles interested
him deeply.
On leaving Cambridge, he took his degree and went immediately to London
to reside with his father. It was a beautiful relation which always
existed between the elder and the younger scholar; and now, as soon as
Arthur had been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple, the father
and son sat down to read law together. Legal studies occupied the young
student till the month of October, 1832, when he became an inmate of the
office of an eminent conveyancer in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Although he
applied himself diligently to obtain a sound practical knowledge of the
profession he had chosen, his former habits of literary pursuit did not
entirely desert him. During the winter he translated most of the sonnets
in the "Vita Nuova," and composed a dramatic sketch with Raffaello for
the hero. About this period he wrote brief, but excellent, memoirs of
Petrarch, Voltaire, and Burke, for the "Gallery of Portraits," then
publishing by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
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