6 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



Tail's skill in Latin verses is specially recorded in the School Reports, 

 and a good specimen of his efforts in versification will be found by the curious 

 in the Edinburgh Academy Report for 1845. To the end of his life he 

 remembered hundreds of lines of Greek and Latin poetry. His children 

 remember how he used to declaim Odes of Horace and long passages of 

 Homer when the fancy struck him. German ballads also were among his 

 stock in trade for apt quotation. A favourite time for such outpourings was 

 on St Andrews Links before breakfast, when he was still young enough to 

 cover the ground without trouble at a good five miles an hour. It may be 

 doubted if anyone whose classical studies ended when he was little more than 

 fifteen years old ever carried away such a store of poetry, or found in it such 

 a never-failing source of pleasure. He frequently spoke of Archdeacon 

 Williams, the Rector of the Academy with whom he read Homer, as a born 

 teacher. "A gentleman, every inch of him," was his emphatic verdict a few 

 weeks before his death. 



In the Rector's report for the year 1851-2, when Tait's position as Senior 

 Wrangler added glory to his old school, it is stated that Tait gained eight 

 medals, six as dux of his class for the successive years 1841-47, and two 

 for mathematical excellence in the Fifth and Sixth classes. 



Tait left the Academy in 1847, and then spent a session at Edinburgh 

 University under the tutelage of Kelland and Forbes. 



He enrolled himself in the two highest of Kelland's three mathematical 

 classes and attended all the examinations. He secured high positions in 

 both, but was distanced in the competition by several of his fellow 

 students. In the highest class he was third in the honours list. 



There was only one class in Natural Philosophy ; but this was 

 divided by Forbes into three divisions. All members of the class attended 

 the same lectures, on the subject matter of which they were periodically 

 examined. The home reading, on which there were special examinations, 

 varied with the division. A student usually entered the third or lowest 

 division, passing into the higher divisions if he enrolled himself in the class 

 more than once. Tait boldly entered himself for the first division. There is 

 a tradition that Forbes in his most dignified manner tried to induce Tait 

 to be content with the second division. This was the course Clerk 

 Maxwell took, in spite of the fact that he was certainly as advanced in 

 his mathematical studies as Tait, and had moreover already published 

 a mathematical paper of distinct originality. Neither Maxwell nor Tait 



