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Letter to Prof.  LEWIS CAMPBELL  9 June 1851
 
 
 
 
TO LEWIS CAMPBELL, ESQ.

                                                                    Cambridge, 9th June 1851.

I find I owe you one letter this term. I intended to write three days ago, but I am now refreshed by classical   papers, and disburdened of half the subjects of examination.

On Friday we had Euclid, on Saturday Greek,—cram on both subjects; to-day Ajax and Tacitus translations. I  did no composition, but did various readings, strongly preferring certain of them for obvious reasons.

I find that 4 hours Euclid is worse than 2 3-hour papers of cram, though I sent up much more cram than Euclid    This of itself shows that disburdening cram is not like grinding, out Mathematics. M—— in the Plato cram, writing   a comparison of Cynics and Platonists, said that Platonism was a real live thing, but Cynicism was sleepy, and that   even in its greatest ornament, Diogenes, the view of the universe was contracted to a front look-out from a   wash-tub, and the summum bonum reduced to sunning one's self with eyes shut and buttons open. This was to let
off his jaw on first setting down, but he let it in among his papers, and could not get it out again.

Excuse my square sentences. I have spent my curves on Tacitus, and I must now proceed to Trig. Write.—-Yrs.