exceptional. Of course details differ, but the type was fairly uniform for provincial people.
This tale has another reference to the purpose of this slight autobiography. It shows how historical tradition is handed down by the direct experience of physical surroundings.
On the intellectual side, my education also conformed to the normal standard of the time. Latin began at the age of ten years, and Greek at twelve. Holidays excepted, my recollection is that daily, up to the age of nineteen and a half years, some pages of Latin and Greek authors were construed, and their grammar examined. Before going to school pages of rules of Latin grammar could be repeated, all in Latin, and exemplified by quotations. The classical studies were interspersed with mathematics. Of course, such studies included history — namely, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. I can still feel the dullness of Xenophon, Sallust, and Livy. Of course we all know that they are great authors; but this is a candid autobiography.
The others were enjoyable. Indeed my recollection is that the classics were well taught, with an unconscious comparison of the older civilization with modern life. I was excused in the composition of Latin Verse and the reading of some Latin poetry, in order to give more time for mathematics. We read the Bible in Greek, namely, with the Septuagint for the Old Testament. Such Scripture lessons, on each Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, were popular, because the authors did not seem to know much more Greek than we did, and so kept their grammar simple.
We were not overworked; and in my final year my time was mostly occupied with duties as Head of the School with its responsibility for discipline outside the class-rooms, on the Rugby model derived from Thomas Arnold, and as Captain of the Games, chiefly cricket and football, very enjoyable but taking time. There was however spare time for private reading. Poetry, more especially Wordsworth and Shelley, became a major interest, and also history.
My university life at Trinity College, Cambridge, commenced in the autumn of 1880; and, so far as residence is concerned, continued without interruption until the summer of 1910. But my membership of the College, first as “scholar” and then as “fellow,” continues unbroken. I cannot exaggerate my obligation to the University of Cambridge, and in particular to Trinity College, for social and intellectual training.
The education of a human being is a most complex topic, which we have hardly begun to understand. The only point on which I feel certain is that there is no widespread, simple solution. We have to consider the particular problem set to each institution by its type of students, and their future opportunities. Of course, for the moment and for a particular social system, some forms of the problem are more widespread than others — for instance, the problem now set to the majority of State Universities in the U.S.A.
