He had meant to read for double honours, but illness, brought on by over-work, obliged him to confine himself to classics.  All who know Oxford are aware, that the term ‘Classics,’ as there used, embraces not only Greek and Latin scholarship, but also Ancient History and Philosophy.  In these latter studies the natural taste and previous education of James Bruce led him to take a special interest, and he threw himself into the work in no niggard spirit.[5] At the Michaelmas Examination of 1832, he was placed in the first class in classics, and common report spoke of him as ’the best first of his ‘year.’  Not long afterwards he was elected Fellow of Merton.  He appears to have been a candidate also for the Eldon Scholarship, but without success.  In a contest for a legal prize it was no discredit to be defeated by Roundell Palmer.

[Sidenote:  Taste for philosophy.]

Some of his contemporaries have a lively remembrance of the eagerness with which, while still a student, he travelled into fields at that period beyond the somewhat narrow range of academic study.  Professor Maurice at one time, Dr. Pusey at another, were his delighted companions in exploring the dialogues of Plato.  Mr. Gladstone ’remembers his speaking of Milton’s prose works with great fervour when they were at Eton together;’ and adds the confession—­interesting alike as regards both the young students—­’I think it was from his mouth I first learned that Milton had written any prose,’ This affection for those soul-stirring treatises of the great advocate of free speech and inquiry he always retained:  they formed his constant companions wherever he travelled; and there are many occasions in which their influence may be traced on his thought and language.  ’I would rather swallow a bushel of chaff than lose the precious grains of truth which may somewhere or other be scattered in it,’ was a sentiment which, though expressed in much later life, was characteristic of his whole career.  In this spirit he listened with deep interest to the roll of theological controversy then raging at Oxford, though he was never carried away by its violence.

In after life he had little leisure to pursue the philosophic studies commenced at Oxford; but they took deep and permanent hold on his mind, and formed in fact the groundwork of his great practical ability.  This is well stated by Sir Frederick Bruce:—­

In Elgin (to use the distinctions of Coleridge, whose philosophy he had thoroughly mastered) the Reason and Understanding were both largely developed, and both admirably balanced.  And in this combination lay the secret of his success in so many spheres of action, so different in their characteristics, so alike in their difficulties.  The process he went through was always the same.  He set himself to work to form in his own mind a clear idea of each of the constituent parts of the problem with which he had to deal.  This