SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 339 



the young men who had joined in this very laudable 

 scheme, and Mr. Banks, as might be expected, profited 

 exceedingly by those instructions. Among true Ox- 

 onians, of course, he stood low. He used to tell in 

 after-life, that when he entered any of the rooms where 

 discussions on classical points were going briskly on, 

 they would say, " Here is Banks, but he knows 

 nothing of Greek." He made no reply, but he would 

 say to himself, " I shall very soon beat you all in a 

 kind of knowledge I think infinitely more important ; " 

 and it happened that, soon after he first heard these 

 jokes, as often as the classical men were puzzled on a 

 point of natural history, they said, " We must go to 

 Banks." 



In 1761 his father died ; and in 1764, on coming of 

 age, he was put in possession of his valuable estates in 

 Lincolnshire, having quitted Oxford the year before. 

 And now it was that the great merit of this distin- 

 guished person shone forth. With all the incitements 

 which his age, his figure, and his station naturally pre- 

 sented to leading a life of idleness, varied only by the 

 more vulgar gratifications of sense or of ordinary am- 

 bition, and with a fortune which placed these gratifi- 

 cations in ample measure within his reach, he con- 

 tinued steadily devoted to scientific pursuits, and only 

 lived for the studies of the naturalist. He remained 

 out of Parliament ; he went little into any society but 

 that of learned men ; his relaxation was confined to 

 exercise, and to angling, of which he was so fond, that 

 he would devote days and even nights to it ; and as it 

 happened that Lord Sandwich had the same taste, and 

 that both possessed estates in Lincolnshire, they be- 

 came intimately acquainted, and saw much of one 

 another. So zealous were both these friends in the 

 prosecution of this sport, that Sir Joseph used to tell 

 of a project they had formed for suddenly draining the 

 Serpentine by letting off the water ; and he was wont 

 to lament their scheme being discovered the night 



