, for
it contains nothing worth your study.' Now, in both these arenas
Fitzjames was comparatively feeble. He read classical books, not only at
Cambridge but in later life, when he was pleased to find his scholarship
equal to the task of translating. But he read them for their contents,
not from any interest in the forms of language. He was without that
subtlety and accuracy of mind which makes the born scholar. He was
capable of blunders surprising in a man of his general ability; and
every blunder takes away marks. He was still less of a mathematician. 'I
disliked,' as he says himself, 'and foolishly despised the studies of
the place, and did not care about accurate classical scholarship, in
which I was utterly wrong. I was clumsy at calculation, though I think I
have, and always have had, a good head for mathematical principles; and
I utterly loathed examinations, which seem to me to make learning all
but impossible.'

A letter from his friend, the Rev. H. W. Watson, second wrangler in
1850, who was a year his senior, has given me a very interesting account
of impressions made at this time. The two had been together at King's
College. Fitzjames's appearance at Trinity was, writes Mr. Watson, 'an
epoch in my college life. A close intimacy sprung up between us, and
made residence at Cambridge a totally different thing from what it had
been in my first year. Your brother's wide culture, his singular force
of character, his powerful but, at that time, rather unwieldy intellect,
his Johnsonian brusqueness of speech and manner, mingled with a
corresponding Johnsonian warmth of sympathy with and loyalty to friends
in trouble or anxiety, his sturdiness in the assertion of his opinions,
and the maintenance of his principles, disdaining the smallest
concession for popularity's sake ... all these traits combined in the
formation of an individuality which no one could know intimately and
fail to be convinced that only time was wanting for the achievement of
no ordinary distinction.' 'Yet,' says Mr. Watson, 'he was distanced by
men immeasurably his inferiors.' Nor can this, as Mr. Watson rightly
adds, be regarded as a condemnation of the system rather than of my
brother. 'I attempted to prepare him in mathematics, and the well-known
Dr. Scott, afterwards headmaster of Westminster, was his private tutor
in classics; and we agreed in marvelling at and deploring the
hopelessness of our tasks. For your brother's mind, acute and able