with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet what other measure is
there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and
difficulty? And what ought the term _University_ to mean, but a
place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same
time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical
literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to
these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up
pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses
and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is
the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast."

In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly-invented Examination for
Honours at Oxford:--

"If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which
it was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is
making serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it
was plunged a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man
must go with it."

And again:--

"On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no remarks. It has
many defects; but it is very honourable to the University to have made
such an experiment. The improvement upon the old plan is certainly
very great; and we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every
species of success."

His opinions on the subject of the Universities did not mellow with age. As
late as 1831 he wrote of a friend who had just sent his son to Cambridge:--