OF ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS. xv 



Mr Hopkins' s direction 1 . I was myself a pupil of Mr Hopkins' 

 at the time ; but Ellis never read with the class of which I was 

 one; in fact, he did not need the kind of lecture which was 

 adapted to myself and others ; he required only that his reading- 

 should be arranged, and put in a form suitable for the Cam- 

 bridge examinations. 



The only occasion upon which I was brought into contact 

 with him as a fellow-student was in attending Professor Peacock's 

 lectures on Plane Astronomy. I remember well the astonish- 

 ment with which I witnessed his demeanour during the lectures : 

 he made no note, he asked no question ; but he quietly remarked 

 as we left the lecture-room together one day, "It saves one the 

 trouble of reading these things up." 



It was in fact a great advantage to him to be able to sub- 

 stitute the use of his ears for that of his eyes. His sight was 

 very tender, and during the latter part of his undergraduate 

 career he regularly employed a person to read to him high 

 mathematical subjects. He once mentioned to me incidentally 

 that the theory of the Earth's Figure, as given in Pratt's 

 Mechanical Philosophy, was in this manner read to him ; which 

 instance I here record as an indication of a power of mental 

 effort possible to very few, and the magnitude of which ma- 

 thematicians will appreciate. 



During his undergraduate career I was not intimately ac- 

 quainted with him : probably he had no desire to increase his 

 circle of friends beyond that which was naturally brought round 

 him in his own college: and his manner was not such as to 

 encourage rapid intimacy. I do not think that at this period 

 the number of his intimate friends was large even within Trinity 

 College, and sometimes a feeling of desolation and want of 



1 In a note to me Mr Hopkins says, with reference to his recollections of 

 Ellis as a pupil, " On one point he always seemed to puzzle me. The extent and 

 definiteness of his acquirement, and his maturity of thought, were so great, so 

 entirely pertaining to the man, that I could hardly conceive when he could have 

 been a boy." 



