Page:Canadian notabilities 2.djvu/72

 PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH

It is a trite observation that the lives of men of letters are seldom marked by much variety of incident. The life of the subject of the present sketch forms no exception to the general rule. He was born on the 13th of August, 1823, at Reading, in Berkshire, where his father was a practising physician of high standing and of ample fortune. As a child, he was conspicuous for the unusual precocity of his understanding, and his memory was prodigious. He received his early education at Eton, from whence, in his nineteenth year, he was transferred to Christ Church, Oxford. Not long after his matriculation he was elected a Demy of Magdalen College. As an undergraduate, he took no part in the proceedings of the College debating societies, and seems to have had no ambition to figure before the world as an orator; but he gained both the Ireland and Hartford scholarships, and the Chancellor's prize for Latin verse. In 1845 he took his baccalaureate degree, and was placed in the first class. Two years afterwards he was elected to a Fellowship in University College, and for some months he officiated as tutor there.

In 1847 he was called to the bar of Lincoln's Inn, and took up his abode in London. He never engaged, or attempted to engage, in actual practice as a barrister; but soon became known as a youth of talent and culture. He espoused the liberal side in politics, and began to contribute to the daily journals, as well as to quarterly and other reviews. The most sanguine anticipations were formed with reference to his future political career. He determined, however, to devote himself to literature, and after spending a season in town he returned to Oxford, where he was for some time a diligent student His studies were specially directed to historical research with a view to an important historical work. He devoted himself to a painstaking and thorough examination of the archives of the university, and ransacked the manuscript treasures deposited in the Bodleian library. There had long