CHAPTER II.

ETON-CAMBRIDGE-CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

EARLY FRIENDSHIPS.

1794-1807.

OF Eton life at the end of the last and beginning of the present century there is no very exact record. Although the discomforts of Long Chamber, the abuse of the fagging system, and the other various defects of diet, discipline, and accommodation which have so often and so feelingly been described by those who were subjected to them, had not, perhaps, at this period, reached their height, yet the condition of the collegers was certainly not such as Henry VI. intended it to be, and Hodgson, from boyhood until the end of his life, always entertained earnest wishes for its improvement. How these wishes were eventually fulfilled the account of his Provostship will show.

Mr. John Keate, afterwards the renowned Head Master Dr. Keate, was Hodgson's tutor at Eton, and maintained a cordial friendship with him throughout

his life. When in 1840 it was suggested to Hodgson that he should stand for the Provostship, he refused to do so until he had ascertained that his old friend and tutor had ceased to desire it.

Among his Eton contemporaries were many boys who were subsequently distinguished in Church and State. William Lamb, afterwards the great Lord Melbourne, John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lancelot Shadwell, the Vice-Chancellor, George Thackeray, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, Henry Drury, the distinguished Harrow Master, were, by a few years, his seniors at Eton; while among his juniors were Scrope Davies and Charles Skinner Matthews, of both of whom Byron has left an interesting account, John Lonsdale, Bishop of Lichfield, Benjamin Heath Drury, the witty and original Eton Master, and Gally Knight, the antiquary and writer upon art. With all of these Hodgson was more or less intimate in after years; while with Edward Craven Hawtrey, who was several years younger, he subsequently formed a warm friendship which he maintained until the end of his life.

At Eton his love of learning was fully indulged, and he wandered widely over the fields of French and English literature without, in any measure, sacrificing that which, at the period of which we are speaking,

KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

2 I

was considered the one essential of an Eton education, classical scholarship, elegant as well as accurate. A manuscript copy of his 'Ludi Juveniles,' written in 1798, contains many Greek and Latin verses of a very high order of merit, while the soundness and solidity of his classical knowledge is amply attested by several terse and vigorous Latin essays. In 1799

he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he took the usual degrees, being excluded from public classical competition by the prejudicial restrictions then imposed upon Kingsmen. His own description of his college at this period expresses forcibly how detrimental such restrictions were to the best interests of University education. Our having all been at the same school certainly deadened emulation by placing us in that rank at Cambridge in which we relatively stood at Eton. Neither had we any public honours to contend for; and ambition thus too often expired in indolence.

The force of this observation is not materially affected by the fact that King's is pre-eminent among colleges for the number of its distinguished 'alumni.' The excellence of the Eton education which all Kingsmen had previously enjoyed was at all times exceptional, and the impossibility of gaining Univer

If

sity distinction may have acted as an incentive to increased exertion in the great contest of life, upon those ardent spirits who did not accept the honours which their Alma Mater can bestow as the highest summit of human ambition. One of the necessary evils of the competitive system is undoubtedly to be found in the fact that in many cases it affixes too final and conclusive an estimate of a young man's powers. in his own opinion, as well as in that of his contemporaries, a youth of twenty-two or twenty-three leaves college with the brand of a second or third class upon him, there is certainly danger, unless his temperament is unusually sanguine, that he should accept the examiner's decision as final. It may be argued with undoubted truth that real merit will make its way against all such temporary obstacles; but when we consider the many circumstances which may contribute to unmerited failure -such, for instance, as illness at the times of the examinations, the almost irresistible influences of a fast and noisy college, the want of pecuniary means to complete the full University career, too often necessitating the work of tuition in vacations in order to eke out a scanty income-we cannot but feel the utter unfairness of which many narrow-minded persons are guilty when they accept that certificate as final which in reality

merely announces what a man has done at a certain period of his life, and gives no conclusive clue whatever to what he can do.

One special advantage may, moreover, be mentioned in connection with the absence of competitive examinations. Not being required to be constantly engaged in preparation of a special character, a naturally studious youth had leisure for far more extensive reading than would otherwise have been possible, and perhaps was sufficiently compensated for the loss of University prizes by the acquirement of a wider and more general stock of knowledge.

But notwithstanding the impossibility of public competition, Francis Hodgson's abilities were not overlooked, and by those of his contemporaries who were most competent to judge he was considered as one of the best classical scholars of his time at Cambridge.

His vacations were spent chiefly at Croydon, and at Lower Moor in Herefordshire, the home of his mother's kindred, the Cokes; and his home studies, carried on under his father's supervision, were participated in by a young nobleman, who was destined to attain to the highest eminence. Two of his father's pupils at this time were sons of a brotherCarthusian the first Lord Liverpool. The eldest of