A man so equipped was essentially a man of letters:  a great deal more than a classicist, but a classicist first and foremost.  And so it was natural that he should think a classical education the best education that could be offered to boys, and should desire to see classics, taught in a literary and not a pedantic spirit, the staple of instruction in all those Public Schools, whether of ancient or of modern foundation, to which the Upper and Middle Classes should resort.  He was perfectly ready to make composition in Greek and Latin the luxury of the few who had a special aptitude for it, therein following the doctrine of Dr. Whewell, and leading the way to a notable reform in Public Schools.  But to read the best Latin and Greek authors was to be the staple of a boy’s education, and thereto were to be added a full and scholarly knowledge of English, and a sufficiency, such as modern life demands, of Science and Mathematics.  He “ventured once, in the very Senate-House and heart of Cambridge, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a little of mathematics goes a long way.”  He thought it no particular gain for a boy to know that “when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water.”  He thought it a clear loss that he should not know the last book of the Iliad, or the sixth book of the AEneid, or the Agamemnon.  He encouraged the Eton boys to laugh at “Scientific lectures, and lessons on the diameter of the sun and moon”; but he was moved almost to tears when “Can you not wait upon the lunatic?” was offered as a paraphrase of “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent from “a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits.”  But he thought it deplorable that a leading physicist should never have heard of Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, and that a leading journalist should confound him with Bishop Wilson of Calcutta.

To the Public Schools he would have entrusted that thorough drilling in Greek, Latin and English which was to be the foundation of the pupils’ culture; and, this done, he would have required the University to offer scope for the fullest development of any special aptitude which the pupil might display.  In brief, the school was to train in general knowledge; the University was to specialize.  In 1868 he wrote:  “An admirable English mathematician told me that he should never recover the loss of the two years which after his degree he wasted without fit instruction at an English University, when he ought to have been under superior instruction, for which the present University course in England makes no provision.  I daresay he will recover it, for a man of genius counts no worthy effort too hard; but who can estimate the loss to the mental training and intellectual habits of the country, from the absence—­so complete that it needs genius to be sensible of it, and costs genius an effort to repair it—­of all regular public provision for the scientific study and teaching of any branch of knowledge?”