LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 621 



familiar with the form of Professor Sinyth. In costume and manner 

 he followed the fashion of another centurj. Being a layman, he 

 usually wore, under his academic gown, coloured clothes ; a blue coat 

 with brass buttons ; buff small clothes ; white stockings and buckled 

 shoes; a hat of extra width of brim, from beneath which fell a 

 plentiful growth of long white hair that was tossed about on the 

 shoulders by the lively movements of the head from side to side ; the 

 face wearing a cheery, youthful look. Professor Smyth was the 

 author of the well known lines carved underneath Kirke White's 

 medallion, formerly in All Saints, but now removed to the new 

 chapel of St. John's College. These sculptured lines and Professor 

 Smyth himself used particularly to interest me, as I happened to 

 occupy in St. John's the very rooms in which Kirke White died ; 

 and frequently I used to see moving about in the college-courts out- 

 side, old Mr. Catton, Kirke White's former tutor. The autograph 

 relic which I transcribe, is simply a casual note making an inquiry 

 of a friend ; but in it he chances to speak of a " Sheridan Memoir," 

 which was a privately-printed notice by himself of Thomas, Richard 

 Brinsley Sheridan's eldest son, to whom the Professor had been 

 private tutor. " My dear Sir," he says, "the day after I sent you 

 Roscoe's Lines, I sent you the Sheridan Memoir. Be so good as to 

 let me know whether you have received it; that if not, I may 

 enquire about it. I put it into the Post Office myself. With kind 

 remembrance to the ladies, believe me, dear Sir, very sincerely yours, 

 Wm. Smyth." The note is written from Norwich. 



The Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge in my day, was the 

 Rev. James Scholefield. The reputation as a Greek scholar of this 

 occupant of the chair of Porson, did not extend, perhaps, far beyond 

 Cambridge. As a divine he was more widely known. He published 

 an edition of the Greek Testament and a volume of Hints towards 

 an improved translation of the same. I used to like to listen to 

 Professor Scholefield's very solid and learned discourses in St. 

 Michael's Church, uttered to all appearance extemj)oraneously ; but 

 all of them most carefully framed and deliberately woi'ded. The 

 Professor's manner was unimpassioned and his speech slow. With 

 fair complexion and sandy hair, his general aspect was Scottish. A 

 volume of the notes from which his sermons were delivered was pub- 

 lished after his decease, and is very curious ; to non-Cambridge men 

 not very intelligible, on account of the free use of algebraical and 



