ntific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But
first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later
life. It may be true that a first class did not always mean a
first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned
how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop,
or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a
counting-house or newspaper office.

I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man, after taking a good
degree at Oxford, spent a year or two at a German University. He
generally came back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still had
to be done in the different branches of study, and did it with a
perseverance that soon produced most excellent results. Of course
there was always the difficulty that young men wished to make their
way in life, that is to make a living. The Church, the bar, and the
hospital, absorbed many of those who in Germany would have looked
forward to a University career. In my own subject more particularly,
my very best pupils did not see their way to gaining even an
independence, unless they gave their time to first securing a curacy,
or a mastership at school; and they usually found that, in order to do
their work conscientiously, they had to give up their favourite
studies in which they would certainly have done excellent work, if
there had been no _dira necessitas_. I often tried to persuade my
friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really useful by
concentrating them and giving studious men a chance of devoting
themselves at the University to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling
of the majority was always against what was called derisively Original
Research, and the fellowship-funds continued to be frittered away,
payment by results being considered a totally mistaken principle, so
that often, as in the case of the new septennial fellowships, there
remained the payment only, but no results.

Still all this became clear to me at a much later time only. My first
years at Oxford were spent in a perfect bewilderment of joy and
admiration. No one can see that University for the first time,
particularly in spring or autumn, without being enchanted with it. To
me it seemed a perfect paradise, and I could have wished for myself no
better lot than that which the kindness of my friends later secured
for me there.

CHAPTER VIII

EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD

I was still very young when I came to