Many a time he has laughed, in
his jovial, rollicking manner, at the preposterous reputation for
learning a man can get by bringing out a fragment of curious knowledge
at the right moment at college. He was an absorbent of knowledge,
never a student. The Latin of Cicero and Virgil was congenial and easy
to him, and he learned more of it than the required portion. But even
in Latin, he tells us, he was excelled by some of his own class; and
"his attainments were not such," he adds, "as told for much in the
recitation-room." Greek he never enjoyed: his curiosity was never
awakened on the edge of that boundless contiguity of interesting
knowledge, and he only learned enough Greek to escape censure. He
said, forty years after, in an after-dinner speech:
"When I was at school I felt exceedingly obliged to Homer's
messengers for the exact literal fidelity with which they
delivered their messages. The seven or eight lines of good
Homeric Greek in which they had received the commands of
Agamemnon or Achilles they recited to whomsoever the message
was to be carried; and as they repeated them verbatim,
sometimes twice or thrice, it saved me the trouble of
learning so much Greek.
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