As for Jacobson’s lectures they were absolutely useless to me, and he never in the slightest degree pressed me to attend them. I remember, however, that he desired an interview with me on the morning I was to go into the schools, for the purpose of testing in some degree the probability of my passing. And it is a singular circumstance that--Horace having been one of the books I was taking up--he put me on, as a trial, at the very passage selected for the same purpose by the examiner in the schools an hour or two later! Jacobson found me able enough to deal with the passage he selected. But had it been otherwise he would have secured my passing--as far as Horace was concerned--despite any amount of ignorance of the author, if only I had the wit to remember his cramming for an hour or two. Eventually, though I had in no wise aimed at anything of the sort, a third class was awarded to me--wholly, as I was given to understand, on account of my Latin writing. The examiners had given--hardly judiciously--so stiff a passage from one of the homilies to be translated into Latin that the majority of the men could not understand the English; which to a certain extent interfered with their translation of it into another language. They were “pass men!” With the candidates for honours it would doubtless have been otherwise. But I _did_ understand it, and I took it into my head to translate it twice--once into Ciceronian and once into Sallustian Latin. And this was rewarded by a third class. _Valeat quantum!_ And thus ended my academical career in a comparative failure, the conclusion of which seemed to have been rather a foregone one. I had no private tutor, and, with the exception of Whately’s logic lectures, no college tuition of any value to me at all. And in addition to all this I was pulled up by the roots and transplanted in the middle of my career. No doubt I was idle, and might have done better. I read a good deal, but it was what I chose to read and not what I ought to have read with a view to the schools. I had no very unacademical pursuits save one. I used occasionally to hire with a friend a gig with a fast horse, drive out to Witney, dine there, wait till the up mail came through, and then run back to Oxford, tormenting the coachman and his team by continually running by him, letting him pass me, and then _da capo_. But these escapades were rare.