for the purpose, first in 1824 and more seriously in 1827. He
seems to have paid much attention to French, and even then to have
attained considerable proficiency. 'When I was at Eton,' Mr. Gladstone
said, 'we knew very little indeed, but we knew it accurately.' 'There
were many shades of distinction,' he observed, 'among the fellows who
received what was supposed to be, and was in many respects, their
education. Some of those shades of distinction were extremely
questionable, and the comparative measures of honour allotted to talent,
industry, and idleness were undoubtedly such as philosophy would not
justify. But no boy was ever estimated either more or less because he
had much money to spend. It added nothing to him if he had much, it took
nothing from him if he had little.' A sharp fellow who worked, and a
stupid fellow who was idle, were both of them in good odour enough, but
a stupid boy who presumed to work was held to be an insufferable
solecism.[25]

KNOWLEDGE AT ETON

My tutor was the Rev. H. H. Knapp (practically all tutors were
clergymen in those days). He was a reputed whig, an easy and
kind-tempered man with a sense of scholarship, but no power of
discipline, and no energy of desire to impress himself upon his
pupils. I recollect but one piece of advice received later from
him. It was that I should form my poetical taste upon Darwin, whose
poems (the 'Botanic Garden' and 'Loves of the Plants') I obediently
read through in consequence. I was placed in the middle remove
fourth form, a place slightly better than the common run, but
inferior to what a boy of good preparation or real excellence would
have taken. My nearest friend of the first period was W. W. Parr, a
boy of intelligence, something over my age, next above me in the
school.

At this time there was not in me any desire to know or to excel. My
first pursuits were football and then cricket; the first I did not
long pursue, and in the second I never managed to rise above
mediocrity and what was termed 'the twenty-two.' There was a
barrister named Henry Hall Joy, a connection of my father through
his first wife, and a man who had taken a first-class at Oxford. He
was very kind to me, and had made some efforts to inspire me with a
love of books, if not of knowledge. Indeed I had read Froissart,
and Hume with Smolle