he cared for
University distinctions only as they might provide him with a good start
in the subsequent competition. But this marked maturity of character did
not imply the possession of corresponding intellectual gifts, or, as I
should rather say, of such gifts as led to success in the Senate House.
Fitzjames had done respectably at Eton, and had been among the first
lads at King's College. He probably came up to Cambridge with confidence
that he would make a mark in examinations. But his mind, however
powerful, was far from flexible. He had not the intellectual docility
which often enables a clever youth to surpass rivals of much greater
originality--as originality not unfrequently tempts a man outside the
strait and narrow path which leads to the maximum of marks. 'I have
always found myself,' says Fitzjames, in reference to his academical
career, 'one of the most unteachable of human beings. I cannot, to this
day, take in anything at second hand. I have in all cases to learn
whatever I want to learn in a way of my own. It has been so with law,
with languages, with Indian administration, with the machinery I have
had to study in patent cases, with English composition--in a word, with
everything whatever.' For other reasons, however, he was at a
disadvantage. He not only had not yet developed, but he never at any
time possessed, the intellectual qualities most valued at Cambridge.

The Cambridge of those days had merits, now more likely to be overlooked
than overvalued. The course was fitted to encourage strenuous masculine
industry, love of fair play, and contempt for mere showy displays of
cleverness. But it must be granted that it was strangely narrow. The
University was not to be despised which could turn out for successive
senior wranglers from 1840 to 1843 such men as Leslie Ellis, Sir George
Stokes, Professor Cayley, and Adams, the discoverer of Neptune, while
the present Lord Kelvin was second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman
in 1845. During the same period the great Latin scholar, Munro (1842),
and H. S. Maine (1844), were among the lights of the Classical Tripos.
But, outside of the two Triposes, there was no career for a man of any
ability. To parody a famous phrase of Hume's, Cambridge virtually said
to its pupils, 'Is this a treatise upon geometry or algebra? No. Is it,
then, a treatise upon Greek or Latin grammar, or on the grammatical
construction of classical authors? No. Then commit it to the flames