In England the public schools were “much less corrupted than the universities; for in the schools a boy was taught, or at least might be taught Greek and Latin,” whereas “in the universities the youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being taught, the sciences which it is the business of those incorporated bodies to teach.” It is only fair to add that Gibbon’s experiences of Magdalen, Bishop Butler’s of Christ Church, and Bentham’s of Queen’s, were equally adverse. And Balliol could at least offer its undergraduates the advantage of an excellent library. When such a cloud lay heavy upon that ancient seat of learning, it is no wonder if Smith with his sedentary disposition and frugal habits—he probably lived on his exhibition of £40—should have spent his six years at Balliol in the society of its books rather than of its tipsy undergraduates. Oxford, it has been observed by the most diligent of his biographers, is the only place he lived in which failed to furnish him with friends. But he never displayed towards it the lively antipathy of Gibbon; far from regretting his residence there, he mentioned it with gratitude many years afterwards. In Oxford he certainly gained the liberal knowledge of ancient and modern literature that enriches and adorns all his writings. The bookshops must have introduced him to his favourite Pope, to Swift and Addison, and the fashionable writers of the day. He employed himself frequently, he used to say, in the practice of translations, especially of French authors, in order to improve his style. “How intimately,” writes Dugald Stewart, “he had once been conversant with more ornamental branches of learning, in particular with the works of the Roman, Greek, French, and Italian poets, appeared sufficiently from the hold they kept of his memory after all the different occupations and inquiries in which his maturer faculties had been employed.” He had an extraordinary knowledge of English poetry, and could quote from memory with a correctness which, says the same grave Scot, “appeared surprising even to those whose attention had never been directed to more important acquisitions.” What little intellectual activity outside politics still lingered on at Oxford was probably connected with philological speculations such as those of James Harris, the learned, if somewhat priggish, author of _Hermes_. At any rate, Smith went deeply into every branch of grammar. Andrew Dalzel, who was Professor of Greek at Edinburgh in Adam Smith’s old age, often remarked on “the uncommon degree in which Mr. Smith retained possession even to the close of his life of different branches of knowledge which he had long ceased to cultivate,” and particularly mentioned to his colleague Dugald Stewart, “the readiness and correctness” of his memory on philological subjects and his acuteness in discussing the _minutiæ_ of Greek grammar.