A boy of sixteen, thin and delicate, who from his earliest infancy had fallen from one illness into another, possessed of an abnormal brain, and for these two reasons shunning, and shunned by, his school-fellows both in playground and classroom, and therefore compelled joyfully to fall back upon books, with which he ate, drank, and slept--conceive such a boy, and one sees Gibbon at Magdalen. Add to this the facts concerning the debauch, the lack of “bookish fellows,” the gross and inert Dons, all of which characterised the times, and it is easy to appreciate the reasons why a man like Gibbon, a high-strung, dreamy creature to whom any crowd of human beings inspired positive fear, and whose interests were entirely removed from wenching, drinking, and gaming, received no benefit from Oxford. He went up intent on nothing but the pursuit of knowledge. In the course of his dealings with his various tutors--which have already been set forth in a previous chapter--he found that knowledge was to be obtained neither in the lecture rooms nor the common rooms. To these latter, being a gentleman commoner, he received invitations and went high in the expectation of learned conversations and brilliant dialogue. He found instead no subjects under discussion save horses, drink, and political preferment. This beardless boy, practically self-educated and big with ideas upon the important subjects of life, turned with disgust from the society of the “port bibbing” and stagnant Fellows. With no definite course of studies to occupy his attentions, and unchecked by any authority, the unaccustomed feeling of liberty swept him into the infringement of rules and statutes. To his tutor he gave casual excuses for non-attendance at lectures, and disappeared from Oxford for days at a time. The unscholarly condition of the university, and his own physical inability to join in any athletic pursuits, united in preventing Oxford from making any impression upon him. Her history, her architecture, her traditions, seem to have held no interest for him, and he was more interested in making expeditions to London and places in the surrounding country than in remaining in the university and studying Undergraduate life. Even the beauty of Oxford’s old walls, tree-bordered lawns and walks, and winding river, made no appeal to him. He was in sympathy with no single thing. It was a mistake on his parents’ part ever to have sent him up. A man of Gibbon’s peculiar temperament was entirely out of place in any university; more particularly Oxford, in the state in which she then was.