Dappled light on wet cobblestones and light drizzle in the air. Against the glare of a low sun an incongruent pair is silhouetted, wandering west along Brasenose Lane. One is relatively tall and big-boned, with a slight stoop; the other is short and delicate, and they are engaged in hushed but earnest conversation. At least, the taller man animatedly talks. The other, in deferential silence, stays close and listens, venturing to interrupt only occasionally. Their faint single shadow follows them between the walls of Lincoln and Exeter, and as they turn right onto the Turl, we lose them amongst the end-of-day bustle.

It was early evening on 30 May 1866, and perhaps it was later that night, in his room, as the rain returned, that Gerard Manley Hopkins recorded the episode in his diary: ‘Pater talking two hours against Xtianity’ (1959: 133). Not that this was particularly unusual. Nearly a month earlier he had described Pater as ‘“Bleak-faced Neology in cap and gown”: no cap and gown but very bleak’ (1959: 138). Benjamin Jowett had recommended Pater to tutor Hopkins – then a Balliol undergraduate – three years earlier, in the vain hope that this rather vocal dissident would counteract the influence of Cardinal Newman.