The University of Cambridge, in the Eighteenth Century (Classic Reprint)
Description:... Excerpt from The University of Cambridge, in the Eighteenth Century His virtues, however, have perished with him and he has come down in history with a sorry and tarnished reputation. It is popularly believed that he was lazy and self-indulgent; but there is good reason to think that his failings have been exaggerated. Though Cam bridge in the eighteenth century was sadly lacking in eminent mathematiciansl, it was not wanting in great classical scholars; and a century of university history which can boast of Bentley, Porson, Dawes and Mark land may be accounted to have paid its debt and more than its debt to classical scholarship. It can of course be contended that scholars of such merit were rare, that they were the exception rather than the rule, and that to derive from them the standard of industry prevailing in the university is to argue from the particular to the general; but, inasmuch as it is the inevitable conse quence of the progress of learning that the greater part of the work of one generation is superseded by the next, and that only a comparatively few students are remembered for all time, it is particularly necessary to be cautious of assuming that idleness must have been almost universal because the proofs of industry are not very obvious. It is true that research was not quite so much the order of the day as it is at present; but the claims of learning and scholarship were certainly not completely disregarded. No one now troubles to in vestigate the high dusty shelves of college libraries on which repose the volumes on philosophy, divinity.
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