Wakefield, himself a Fellow of Jesus,[962] procured Malthus an entrance to that college, and directed his studies till he matriculated there as a pensioner (or ordinary commoner) on 17th December, 1784, beginning residence in 1785.[963] Robert esteemed him highly. He described him twenty years afterwards[964] as a man “of the strictest and most inflexible integrity,” who gave up not only prospects of preferment, but even opportunities of usefulness, rather than deny the truth and offend his conscience,—a man hot and intemperate in public controversy,[965] but modest and genial in society, never advancing his opinions till challenged, nor trying to make converts to them, but urging others to an independent study of the facts,—finally, a genius cramped by its own learning and good memory, never taking time and pains to do itself justice in its writings. Though a foe to the thirty-nine Articles, Wakefield was a stout believer in Christianity, and attacked Paine’s _Age of Reason_ in a rough style that contrasts strongly with the sober remarks of Malthus on Paine’s _Rights of Man_. Up to 1785, therefore, his father and Wakefield had the largest share in the education of Malthus; and their influence was shown in the very fact that the opinions of Malthus were not fixed by them. His opinions were to be of his own forming; and, having never learned the schoolboy’s ambition of prize-taking,[966] he found time at college not only for what would give him the best degree, but for every study that interested him, especially history and poetry and modern languages, as in his later years for Italian literature. Frend, author of a political tract, _Peace and Union_, which brought him the honour of prosecution,[967] was his college tutor, and spoke highly of him.[968] It says much for his mathematical powers that in spite of his wide general reading he took the ninth place among the wranglers of his year, 1788. If he had been confining himself, as his father supposed, to the beaten track, he might, like Paley, have reached the senior wranglership.[969] After the Tripos he proposed to study at Cambridge and at home on a plan of his own. His father, on the false analogy of his own experience, had warned him against the abstract studying of scientific and mathematical principles apart from their applications; he must not “work curious stitches on a piece of rag”; he must become a practical surveyor, mechanic, and navigator. The son had answered that there would be ample time after the Tripos to make the applications, and there was little enough time in three years to study the principles. But thereafter, “if you will give me leave to proceed in my own plans of reading for the next two years (I speak with submission to your judgment), I promise you at the expiration of that time to be a decent natural philosopher, and not only to know a few principles, but to be able to apply these principles in a variety of useful problems.”[970] In reality, so far