258 “OBITUARY x 
private tutor. That a boy, even in his leisure 
hours, should permit himself to be interested in 
- any but book-learning seems to have been regarded 
as little better than an outrage by the head master, 
who thought it his duty to administer a public 
rebuke to young Darwin for wasting his time 
on such a contemptible subject as chemistry. 
English composition and literature, modern lan- 
guages, modern history, modern geography, appear 
to have been considered to. be as despicable as 
chemistry. 
For seven long years Darwin got through his 
appointed tasks ; construed without cribs, learned 
by rote whatever was demanded, and concocted 
his verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And 
the result, as it appeared to his mature judgment, 
was simply negative. ‘ The school as a means of 
education to me was simply a blank.” (I. p. 32.) 
On the other hand, the extraneous chemical 
exercises, which the head master treated so 
contumeliously, are gratefully spoken of as the 
“best part” of his education while at school. 
Such is the judgment of the scholar on the school ; - 
as might be expected, it has its counterpart in the © 
judgment of the school on the scholar. The 
collective intelligence of the staff of Shrewsbury 
School could find nothing but dull mediocrity in 
Charles Darwin. The mind that found satisfac- 
tion in knowledge, but very little in mere learning ; © 
that could appreciate literature, but had no par- 
