ing classical
literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to
these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up
pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses
and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is
the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast."

In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly-invented Examination for
Honours at Oxford:--

"If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which
it was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is
making serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it
was plunged a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man
must go with it."

And again:--

"On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no remarks. It has
many defects; but it is very honourable to the University to have made
such an experiment. The improvement upon the old plan is certainly
very great; and we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every
species of success."

His opinions on the subject of the Universities did not mellow with age. As
late as 1831 he wrote of a friend who had just sent his son to Cambridge:--

"He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what good qualities
he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. If men had made no more
progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we
should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and
drinking out of the palms of our hands."

It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.--

"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the
only consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and
the waste of money."

In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a
profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should
begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family,
narrow at the beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing health
and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had
dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures of Dr.,
afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to become a
doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to China! His own
strong preference was for the B