On returning from my short visit to Oxford, I set to work for the English Essay, and soon after finishing and sending in my exercise (name under seal as usual), was encouraged by taking solus the University Latin Essay Prize. Before this, however, I had started with the intention of going out next year in both Triposes, and had accordingly put on two coaches. My old friend Travis being no longer a resident, I had recourse to a Johnian, one of the few Classical men of that College, as different a man from Travis as might be, but quite a character too in his way. He was so large and dignified in person as to have acquired the soubriquet of Jupiter—in those miserable, drizzling, spitting days of which the English climate boasts an extra share, we used to appeal to him, by this name, to exercise his influence with the clerk of the weather—one of the best-natured and one of the laziest of mortals: his end and occupation and pleasure seemed to be to lie all day on a sofa, writing Greek and Latin verses, which he did beautifully, or reading English poetry. For Mathematics—having to begin from the beginning, the six months before me were not too long a time—I took shelter in a great refuge of Classical men, who had a wonderful reputation for putting through incapables, and worked some thirty or forty pupils regularly.