At the age of nineteen, Dicey went up to Oxford to read Classics. Due to his frail physical condition, he delayed matriculation at his college, Balliol, until Easter of 1854. Most students commenced their studies in the autumn and so Dicey matriculated with only two or three other students. One of them, as it happens, was Thomas Erskine Holland, who would become the Chichele Professor of International Law at Oxford and a lifelong friend.1