d
Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The
Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of
Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline
of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot
at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from
Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which
would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact, that
fifty years later he was so absurd as to set up his own authority
against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He
made no proficiency, either in the old philosophy which still lingered
in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord
Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak
of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally
ignorant contempt.

"After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a
degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a
lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read,
but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and
acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a
Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as
might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received a
rambling education, who had not thought deeply, who had been disgusted
by the morose austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from
childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel
an impartial contempt for them all.

"On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter
Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people
were, like their father, warm for the Royal cause. At an inn where they
stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing
on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of
malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before the
Governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those
troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show
where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was
immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

"This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was
only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. Sh