20 MEMORIES OF MY LIrE
things, I may almost say under the mere influence of his presence. His photograph, which is near me as I write, testifies to a personality that accords with the grandeur of his character. I owe much to his influence, and still remain conscious of the void in my friendships caused by his death very many years ago.
When I was fourteen years old it became time for me to go to a bigger school. My father had a Quaker's repugnance to public schools of the usual type, and it was finally decided that I should be, sent to King Edward's School in Birmingham, then commonly known as the " Free School," to which a headmaster of high attainments had been recently appointed. This was Dr. Jeune (18o6-i868), afterwards Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Bishop of Peterborough. I lived as a pupil, together with a few others, at his house by the Five Ways, to which a considerable garden was attached, and whence we walked daily, through a mile or so of street, to and from the school. I retained Dr. Jeune's friendship until his death, and it was impossible not to recognise his exceptional ability and educational zeal, but the character of the education was altogether uncongenial to my temperament. I learnt nothing, and chafed at my limitations. I had craved for what was denied, namely, an abundance of good English reading, well-taught mathematics, and solid science. Grammar and the dry rudiments of Latin and Greek were abhorrent to me, for there seemed so little sense in them. I was a fool to have been recalcitrant, and not to have profited by what I could have had, because
many of my schoolfellows prospered on the teaching.
