which I may possibly have provoked, will
prudently spare this plain narrative of my studies, or rather of my
idleness; and of the unfortunate event which shortened the term of my
residence at Oxford. But it may be suggested, that my father was unlucky
in the choice of a society, and the chance of a tutor. It will perhaps
be asserted, that in the lapse of forty years many improvements have
taken place in the college and in the university. I am not unwilling
to believe, that some tutors might have been found more active than Dr.
Waldgrave, and less contemptible than Dr.****. About the same time, and
in the same walk, a Bentham was still treading in the footsteps of a
Burton, whose maxims he had adopted, and whose life he had published.
The biographer indeed preferred the school-logic to the new philosophy,
Burgursdicius to Locke; and the hero appears, in his own writings, a
stiff and conceited pedant. Yet even these men, according to the measure
of their capacity, might be diligent and useful; and it is recorded of
Burton, that he taught his pupils what he knew; some Latin, some Greek,
some ethics and metaphysics; referring them to proper masters for
the languages and sciences of which he was ignorant. At a more recent
period, many students have been attracted by the merit and reputation
of Sir William Scott, then a tutor in University College, and now
conspicuous in the profession of the civil law: my personal acquaintance
with that gentleman has inspired me with a just esteem for his abilities
and knowledge; and I am assured that his lectures on history would
compose, were they given to the public, a most valuable treatise. Under
the auspices of the present Archbishop of York, Dr. Markham, himself an
eminent scholar, a more regular discipline has been introduced, as I am
told, at Christ Church; a course of classical and philosophical studies
is proposed, and even pursued, in that numerous seminary: learning has
been made a duty, a pleasure, and even a fashion; and several young
gentlemen do honour to the college in which they have been educated.
According to the will of the donor, the profit of the second part of
Lord Clarendon's History has been applied to the establishment of a
riding-school, that the polite exercises might be taught, I know not
with what success, in the university. The Vinerian professorship is
of far more serious importance; the laws of his country are the first
science of an Englishman of rank and fo