was considered as a branch of learning. To liberal opinions in politics he had always inclined, and these became more firmly fixed, but he was never an ardent politician.
His term of office as examiner gave an impetus to his study of Aristotle, and he soon acquired a reputation as the most successful college tutor and the ablest lecturer on the ‘Ethics’ in Oxford. For the three years (1848–1851) he was, moreover, absolute ruler of his college, which during that time was one of the best managed in the university. They were the happiest years of his life. He was an ideal teacher, grudging no amount of time or labour to his pupils, teaching them how to think, and drawing out and developing their mental faculties. He excited the warmest affection on their part, and their success in the schools, if not always commensurate with their or his wishes, was considerable. For several years he invited two or three undergraduates to join him for some weeks in the long vacation at the lakes, in Scotland, or elsewhere, and he assisted them in their studies without fee.
Dr. Radford, the rector of Lincoln, died in October 1851. The fellows taking actual part in the election of his successor were nine in number—two others were abroad. Of these nine, three resident fellows who represented the intellectual element of the college warmly supported Pattison; a fourth—non-resident—signified his intention to do the same, and this, with his own vote, gave him a majority. But he was not popular in the common-room, where his habit of retiring at eight o'clock, and spending the rest of the evening in tutorial work or private study, was resented by those who were accustomed to devote the whole evening to port wine and whist. A discreditable intrigue induced the non-resident fellow at the last moment to support an obscure candidate whose single merit was that he would keep out Pattison, and probably, if successful, would reduce the college to the happy condition of mental torpor out of which it had of late been raised. But though this defection prevented Pattison's election, it did not result in that of the rival candidate; and in the end, as a choice of evils, the Rev. James Thompson, B.D., an equally unknown man, without any special qualification for the headship of a learned society, was elected, mainly through the votes of Pattison and his friends (Memoirs, pp. 272–88; Letter to the Rev. J. Thompson, by J. L. Kettle, London, 1851; Letter to the Rev. J. Thompson, by Rev. T. E. Espin, Oxford, 1851; Letter to Rev. T. E. Espin, from J. L. Kettle, London, 1851). To Pattison the blow was crushing. It seemed to him the downfall of all his hopes and ambitions, no doubt partly personal, but chiefly for the prosperity and success of the college in which his whole heart and pride had been for some years invested. But in the account of his feelings, which he wrote thirty years afterwards, he does himself injustice. He did not fall into the state of mental and moral degradation which he there graphically describes, and the language which he uses of his state is greatly exaggerated. The routine of tuition may have become as weary as he represents it, but, while his great depression was obvious to all who came in contact with him at this time, his lectures—on Aristotle and on Thucydides—were as able, as suggestive, and as stimulating as ever, and, except for the interruption of a serious illness, the result, no doubt, of the shock which he had sustained, his interest in his pupils and his efforts to aid them in their studies and to promote their success in the schools were as great as ever. An ill-natured but unsuccessful attempt to deprive him of his fellowship for not proceeding to the degree of B.D. within the statutable period added to his vexation (he took the degree in 1851). In his ‘Diary’ in August 1853 he writes: ‘My life seems to have come to an end, my strength gone, my energies paralysed, and all my hopes dispersed’ (Memoirs, p. 298). But, in fact, matters had already begun to mend. In the spring of 1853 he had been nominated a second time examiner in literæ humaniores. He again took to fishing, and to this pursuit, and to frequent excursions in the north of England and Scotland, he attributed the restoration of his mental equilibrium and his old energy. ‘Slowly the old original ideal of life, which had been thrust aside by the force of circumstance, but never obliterated, began to resume its place. As tone and energy returned, the idea of devoting myself to literature strengthened and developed’ (ib. p. 308).
It was the ‘Ephemerides’ of Isaac Casaubon, printed at the Clarendon Press in 1851, that specially drew him out of his depression and launched him on the field of inquiry that was to be his main occupation for the remaining thirty years of his life. He wrote (in 1852) an article on Casaubon which alone proves how he exaggerated in his ‘Memoirs’ the mental prostration of the period; it appeared in the ‘Quarterly Review’ in 1853. Its success made him contemplate a history of learning from the Renaissance downwards; but he soon found this scheme was too extensive, and he contracted his views to the history of classical learning. Of this plan
