218 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VII. 



To LEWIS CAMPBELL, Esq. 



Trin. Coll, 17th October 1855. 



I expect to be grinding this term. There are lectures on 

 hydrostatics and optics, papers for questionists to be set 

 and read over with the men, which is procrastinations. 

 Besides this I may have to lecture the working men, and 

 what spare time I have I intend to use on various subjects, 

 which will keep me in work for some time to come, so I do 

 not require any pupils to keep my hand in this term. I was 

 looking for Jowett's book in the library, but, as usual, all the 

 new theology had been carried off in a lump by the M.A.'s, 

 who get in the first day. I wanted Ellicott, but he was out 

 too, so I took Carlyle on the French Ee volution. I have 

 been reading the English language, comprising Chaucer, Sir 

 Tristram, Bacon F., Pope, Berkeley, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns' 

 letters, Isaac Taylor's Saturday Night, Carlyle, Kuskin, 

 Kingsley, Maurice, and combining the whole with Trench on 

 English Past and Present, and with all this I derive pleasure 

 and information, but not a single glimmer of a theory about 

 Words. 



And yet I have presently to state whether words mould 

 thought or thought brews words. Is not one theory as 

 good as another ? Faith and a dale better too, if it was not 

 for the sake of laying them together by the ears, which is a 

 difficult task when you have to catch both yourself. 



I was staying at the Blackburns' when I was at Glas- 

 gow, but they were away, and the Kamsays fed and tended 

 me. I found your photograph there, together with a few 

 other pleasant recollections. I have been over to H. M. 

 Butler, who is come up again. We were talking about 

 Maurice, etc. Maurice is a man I am loath to say nay to, or 

 to accuse of wilful perversion of facts; but in some matters I 

 think he is in great error, especially in his estimate of 

 respectable ordinary Christians, as far as regards their creed. 

 He cannot go too far in enforcing practice and work on 

 people who were bound to it before, and theoretically confess 

 it, but he is too hard upon the theories, and totally mis- 



