Henry Martyn was not fully twenty years of age when, in January 1801, he came out Senior Wrangler and first Smith's (mathematical) Prizeman. His year was one of the most brilliant in the recent history of the University. Woodall of Pembroke was second. Robert Grant was third, and Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) fourth Wrangler. They distanced him in classics, once his strongest point. But the boy who entered college believing that geometry was to be learned by committing Euclid[3] to memory had given the whole strength of his powers during three years to the college examinations, so as to please his father and win the applause of his fellows. Until recently it was possible for a student to enter the University ignorant of mathematics, and to come out Senior Wrangler, as the late Professor Kelland used to tell his Edinburgh class. Such was the reverence for Newton that the Leibnizian methods were not recognised in the University studies till the reform of the Cambridge course was introduced by Dean Peacock and his contemporaries. In those earlier days, Dr. Carlyon,[4] who had been one of his school-fellows, tells us high Wranglers won their places by correct book-work rapidly produced in oral examination from four set treatises by Wood and Vince, on optics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and astronomy; problem papers were answered by the best men. Martyn's grand-nephew, himself a distinguished mathematician, remarks that he sprang from a family of calculators, and so had the patience and taste necessary for mathematical attainments. There is no evidence that he pursued science even at Cambridge except as a tutor; he does not appear to have been a mathematical examiner even in his own college. The truth is seen in his own comment on a success which at once won for him admiration and deference in circles that could not appreciate the lofty Christian aims of his life: 'I obtained my highest wishes, but was surprised to find that I had grasped a shadow.' He was called to other service, and for that he brought his University triumph with him to the feet of Christ. He was too cultured, however, to despise learning or academic reputation, for they might be made weapons for the Master's use, and we shall find him wielding both alike in home and foreign missions. His genius and learning found expression in the study, the translation, and the unceasing application to the consciences of men, of the Word of God. His early love of the classics of Greece and Rome prevailed over his later mathematical studies to make him an ardent philologist, with the promise, had he lived, of becoming an Orientalist of the type of Sir William Jones. If he was known in his college as 'the man who had not lost an hour' when University honours alone were his object, how much would not his unresting perseverance have accomplished, when directed by the highest of all motives, had he been spared to the age of William Carey or John Wilson?