states, he grew to have a dislike to school and university matches being made public rather than private affairs; and his remarks on this head are full of his characteristic commonsense. There can, however, be no doubt that Nature had implanted in him a most healthy and ardent love of outdoor sports and exercises. As he was a vigorous oarsman as an Oxford undergraduate, so in later years, when a grave statesman, he was a fearless whip and an adroit and intrepid cyclist.

CHAPTER IV

OXFORD (continued)

(1833-1840)

Graduate Fellow of Magdalen - Private Tutor, and would-be Professor

LORD SELBORNE thus closes his narrative of Robert Lowe's career at Oxford :

'In 1833 Lowe took his degree with great honour—a first class in classics and second in mathematics. He was not long afterwards elected to a Fellowship of Magdalen, of which College I had myself become a Fellow in 1834 on taking my degree; but I left Oxford in 1835 for London; and had from that time till he entered Parliament fewer opportunities of meeting him than before. He married in 1836, and remained for some years in Oxford taking pupils; and was beyond question the ablest and most successful private tutor then in the University.'

Lord Sherbrooke in his brief autobiography states that his failure to secure the double-first was a disappointment to him; for (he writes)'I was sure that I knew enough to entitle me to a first class [in mathematics], though I felt perfectly conscious that I had not brought my knowledge properly out.' Mr. Pycroft, who, however, like most anecdote-mongers, is as often wrong as right, states in his Oxford Memories that 'Lord Sherbrooke was pronounced by his tutors certain of a first in mathematics and not certain in classics.' Although

this remark appears in a book of anecdotal reminiscences, it looks, in the light of Lord Sherbrooke's own statement, as if it had some foundation in fact.

In 1835 Robert Lowe was elected Fellow of Magdalen on the foundation of which birth in the county of Notts was a qualification. Two years previous to this, as he tells us in the Chapter of Autobiography, he had embarked on his labours as a private tutor. We have his own word for it that, compared with these labours, everything else in his career has been mere play and recreation.' More than one old Oxford man has written to express his very natural doubt as to whether even Lord Sherbrooke's head could have long withstood the strain of this terrific time. He often had, he tells us, no less than ten pupils; and for five years out of the seven during which he was a private tutor, he also took pupils during the long vacation.

6

I do not think (he writes) I could have gone on with it much longer.' One does not wonder at this confession when it is recorded that so able a man as the late Bishop Jackson, who as a private tutor had fewer pupils than Lowe, owned that his head was giving way.

Canon Melville, however, referring to this tutorial period, relates a story concerning Lord Sherbrooke which, under the circumstances, can only fill us with amazement for his capacity for work and his love of learning for its own sake.

Lowe was a much-sought private tutor a function which he fulfilled for some years after taking his own degree. At one time he had so many pupils that, between nine in the morning and ten at night, he had besides his dinner-hour but one spare hour-viz. that from four to five. A friend similarly occupied met Lowe at the time one day in Oxford with a book under his arm and said: Where are you going? Come for a turn in the country, as I do for my hour.' 'No,' said Lowe, it's the only time I have for a Sanscrit lesson with Professor Wilson.'

In Mr. Pycroft's Oxford Memories we light on the following:

'Mr. Lowe,' said my friend Rendall, ' was the cleverest man I have ever read with. He was so near-sighted he seemed to depend very little on his sight, and to know all his books by heart. He had the widest Oxford acquaintance of any man of my day.'

With pardonable pride, Lord Sherbrooke himself bears out the truth of such statements by declaring that he was 'popular as a tutor,' and that he retained his number up to the last, and finished in November 1840 with four pupils in a first class of six.' It will be remembered that he then mentions some of his more successful pupils, and recalls, with evident satisfaction, that many came to him even from those 'distinguished men' Mr. Newman and Dr. Arnold. In his later years Lord Sherbrooke was much pleased by the following passage in a private letter of Mr. J. A. Froude: 'I remember Lord Sherbrooke well at Oxford before I went out of residence. Indeed, I was almost his pupil. I asked him to take me when I was going into the schools. To his regret, I believe, and certainly to mine, he had no room for me.'

There could hardly be stronger testimony to the high esteem in which Robert Lowe was held as a private tutor, than is afforded by the following extract from a letter written by an old pupil but life-long political opponent, the Right Hon. Gathorne Hardy, Earl of Cranbrook: I was his pupil and had a great regard and esteem for him, as he was a man of singular honesty and frankness. He gave great attention to those who read with him, and it was wonderful that with ten or eleven men at one time he saw each separately and never flagged. At the same time he was reading on his own account, and I remember his telling me that he was learning a modern language (I think), Spanish.

A pupil who failed in attendance he would plainly tell that he would not take his money unless he came, and when

he saw that anyone had really no chance of honours, he would frankly tell him so.'

Another of his pupils, Dr. Richard Congreve, the cultured disciple of Auguste Comte, evokes a more sombre recollection of this period of Lord Sherbrooke's Oxford career: 'I was for a short time the pupil of Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, and I preserve a very grateful sense of the benefits derived from his teaching. I remember his expression as he closed the last lecture. "There," he said, "that is the last lecture I shall give in this place, where I have been selling my lifeblood at 7s. 6d. the hour.""

Dr. Congreve kindly reminds me that Charles Arnold, as well as Arthur Hugh Clough, read with Lord Sherbrooke during a long vacation at Ambleside.

Lord Sherbrooke, as his old Oxford friends testify, was never idle. He took pupils even through the vacation, and in addition to his all but incessant labours with them, he was often engaged on some difficult and independent branch of study on his own account. It was in the Long Vacation, spent with pupils at Festiniog in 1834, that Lowe fell headlong over 'Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit,' escaping by a miracle with his life, as he himself has so graphically narrated. It is surprising what a number of persons have written to inquire as to the truth of this story, which has, evidently, in various forms enjoyed a wide circulation.

The following letter, written on this memorable vacation, to one of his oldest and most cherished friends, the Rev. W. Boyd, now Archdeacon of Craven and Vicar of Arncliffe, Skipton, for which I am indebted to the courtesy of the Dean of Westminster, is eminently characteristic, and in my judgment well worthy of preservation. Archdeacon Boyd was Lowe's contemporary at University College. Greatly and deservedly respected by him then and always,' writes Dean Bradley. It is generally believed that Lord Sherbrooke once declined to compete for a Fellowship in order that his friend might get it;