text:  Through accident it was in part and where through no accident but my own nature not through features of it at all painful to recollect that constantly in early life (that is from boyish days until eighteen when by going to Oxford practically I became my own master) I was engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle with some person or body of persons that sought like the Roman _retiarius_ to throw a net of deadly coercion or constraint over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom