320 THE EDUCATION OF GENIUS.

It is possible that we have a reminiscence of his own experiences in the following :

" In the dark cloisters of the Franciscan convent, which were close to our schoolroom,
there used to hang a big crucifix of gray wood, a grim carving which even now at
times haunts my dreams, and stares at me mournfully with bleeding eyes. Before
'
this image I often stood and prayed. O thou poor Deity, once tortured like myself,
if it be possible, grant that I may remember the verba irregularia.' " Shelley is supposed
to be referring to his experiences at Eton in the lines : —
" Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong ;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

Thackeray, in his earlier writings, has shown his feeling of piety towards the
Charterhouse School, where he was educated, by calling it Slaughterhouse.
Altogether, it cannot be said that the boys who afterwards proved themselves to
have been the most highly-gifted, shone with much lustre at school, or found them
selves in happy harmony with their school environment.
The record of the doings of genius at college is not greatly different. No doubt a
number of the ablest men have won university distinctions. In a few cases, indeed, a
thoroughly original man has carried everything before him. Thus, among the senior
wranglers we find the name of Paley, the eminent theologian. The mathematician, Sir
W. Rowan Hamilton, is said to have " completely mastered " the mathematics of his
college at the age of fifteen. The metaphysician, Sir William Hamilton, won high
distinctions both at Glasgow and Oxford. Among famous names that distinguished
themselves by winning honours in classics (including English verse) may be mentioned
Cowley, Coleridge, and Macaulay.
At the same time it may safely be said that a very small proportion of the men of
genius who have visited our universities have presaged their after fame by high academic
distinction. Thus it has been computed that, though Cambridge has been rich in poets,
only four appear in her honours lists.1 Not only so, we know that some of the ablest
men have proved signal failures at college. Goldsmith was quite as famous at college
as at school for incorrigible stupidity, and only just managed to scrape through his
degree, the lowest down in the list. Swift disputes with Goldsmith the distinction of ,
greatest dunce, seeing that he could not even obtain his degree, breaking down in the
definition of a syllogism. A third distinguished member of the same college, Edmund
Burke, was a very irregular student. He had spurts of study, or, as he calls them,
" sallies of passion," but, unfortunately, the direction of these crazes did not coincide
with that of the prescribed curriculum, so that he would be diving deep into natural
philosophy when he ought to have been giving his mind to logic. Among other
desultory learners at college, we may include Gibbon. The fourteen months he spent
at Oxford, he writes, "proved the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life."
Southey's is a very similar case. He was so dead to the advantages of college lectures
that his tutor advised him to discontinue attendance on his course.
In many cases we have too clear signs of a disposition to rebel against the
discipline and routine of college life. Milton was a most indocile undergraduate, and,
according to rumour, kicked so vigorously against either the discipli ne or the exercises
of his college, that he brought on himself a flogging. Dryden must have been a bit
of a rebel at Cambridge, for we read of his being discommoned and gated for a
fortnight for disobedience and contumacy, and he afterwards wrote of his alma mater in
the lines :—
" Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother university."

Wordsworth, like Milton, was intractable and headstrong at college. Shelley, as

everybody knows, was an unruly subject at Oxford. He objected fiercely to the
prescribed studies, scouted Aristotle, and ended by getting himself expelled for holding
atheistic opinions. Others who keenly disliked the fixed routine of tutors and college
exercises were Johnson, whose love for Oxford was qualified by a fervid hatred of her
tutors, and Gray, who complained bitterly of having to endure lectures daily and
1 On this point some interesting " Senior Wranglers," in the CornhiU
particulars are given in an article on
Magazine, vol. 45, p. 225.