CHAP. VI.] SCHOLAR OF TRINITY. 175 



copy of verses beginning " Gin a body meet a body Going 

 through the air," in which he had twisted the well-known 

 song into a description of the laws of impact of solid bodies. 



There was also a description which Maxwell wrote of 

 some University ceremony, I forget what, in which some- 

 body " went before," and somebody " followed after," and 

 " in the midst were the wranglers playing with the symbols." 



These last words, however meant, were in fact a descrip- 

 tion of his own wonderful power. I remember one day in 

 lecture, our lecturer had filled the black board three times 

 with the investigation of some hard problem in Geometry of 

 Three Dimensions, and was not at the end of it, when Max- 

 well came up with a question whether it would not come 

 out geometrically, and showed how with a figure, and in a 

 few lines, there was the solution at once. 1 



Maxwell was, I daresay you remember, very fond of a 

 talk upon almost anything. He and I were pupils (at an 

 enormous distance apart) of Hopkins, and I well recollect 

 how, when I had been working the night before and all the 

 morning at Hopkins's problems with little or no result, Max- 

 well would come in for a gossip, and talk on while I was 

 wishing him far away, till at last, about half an hour or so 

 before our meeting at Hopkins's, he would say " Well, I 

 must go to old Hop's problems ; " and by the time we met 

 there they were all done. 



I remember Hopkins telling me, when speaking of Max- 

 well, either just before or just after his degree, " It is not 

 possible for that man to think incorrectly on physical sub- 

 jects ; " and Hopkins, as you know, had had perhaps more 

 experience of mathematical minds than any man of his 

 time. 



Of Maxwell's geniality and kindness of heart you will 

 have had many instances. Every one who knew him 



1 Compare Plato, Thcet. 147, C D. A Cambridge friend who knew 

 Maxwell at a later time, says of him, " One striking characteristic was 

 remarked by his contemporaries at Hopkins's lectures. Whenever the 

 subject admitted of it he had recourse to diagrams, though the rest 

 might solve the question more easily by a train of analysis." 



