AND MODEUN PHYSICS. 31 



given to Professor Campbell their recollections of 

 these undergraduate days, which are full of interest 

 Thus Mr. Lawson writes * : 



"There must be many of his quaint verses about, if one 

 could lay hands on them, for Maxwell was constantly producing 

 something of the sort and bringing it round to his friends, 

 with a sly chuckle at the humour, which, though his own, no 

 one enjoyed more tlmn himself. 



**I remember Maxwell coming to me one morning with a 

 copy of verses beginning, 'Gin a body meet a body going 

 through the air, 1 in which he had twisted the well-known song 

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



44 There was also a description which Maxwell wrote of 

 some University ceremony I forget what in which somel>ody 

 *went before* and somebody 'followed after, 1 and 'in the 

 midst were the wranglers, playing with the symbols. 1 



"These last words, however meant, were, in fact, a dcscrii>- 

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

 lecture, our lecturer had tiled the black-board three times 

 with tho investigation of some hard problem in Geometry of 

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

 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. 



"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 hud been working the night before and all the morning 

 at Hopkins' s problems, with little or no result, Maxwell 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 Uopkins'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 

 Maxwell, either just before or just after his degree, ' It U not 



* Life of J. C. Maxwell," p. 174. 



