Dr. Carson was rector, and from 1824 to 1827 at the newly founded academy under Archdeacon Williams, where he greatly distinguished himself. Proceeding in 1827 to Glasgow University (1827–30), he there proved himself a laborious student, rising usually at 4 a.m. and reading much by himself; he seldom worked less than ten hours in the day. His chief teachers at Glasgow were the principal, Duncan Macfarlane [q. v.]; Robert Buchanan (1785–1873) [q. v.], the professor of logic; and Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford [q. v.], professor of Greek. His principal friends were Archibald Campbell Swinton [see under Swinton, James Rannie], who became a professor at Edinburgh and married Tait’s cousin, a daughter of Lady Sitwell; and Henry Selfe (afterwards his brother-in-law and a police magistrate in London).
During his career in Glasgow Tait came to the resolution to enter the ministry of the church of England. Owing to his father’s pecuniary difficulties, he competed in 1829 for a Snell exhibition to Balliol College at Oxford. He was successful and matriculated from Balliol on 29 Jan. 1830, and went into residence in October. In November he gained one of the Balliol scholarships. In the same month he was confirmed by Bishop Bagot.
His tutor at Balliol was George Moberly (afterwards headmaster of Winchester and bishop of Salisbury). He had introductions to Whately, then principal of St. Alban Hall, and to other distinguished men, including Shuttleworth, principal of Brasenose, the friend of Lord Holland (afterwards bishop of Chichester), at whose house he met many of the whig notabilities and intellectual men of the day. His contemporaries and pupils at Balliol included Herman Merivale, Manning, Wickens, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, James Lonsdale, Stafford Northcote, Jowett, Clough, John Duke Coleridge, William George Ward, and Frederick Oakeley. He became an influential member of the union, where he encountered Gladstone and Roundell Palmer. He was also a member of a new club, the Ramblers, and the question whether the members of that club could be also members of the union (then presided over by Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) gave rise to the mock-Homeric poem of the ‘Uniomachia,’ by Thomas Jackson (1812–1886) [q. v.], in which Tait figured as a foremost champion.
His father died in 1832, his nurse in 1833, Tait being with her to the last. The long vacation of 1833 he spent with Roundell Palmer [q. v.] and three other graduates at Seaton in Devonshire, and a local bard (the Rev. J. B. Smith, a dissenting minister) augured, in a poem called ‘Seaton Beach,’ that Tait ‘a mitred prelate’ would ‘hereafter shine.’ In October 1833 he graduated B.A. with a first class in classics, and, after taking pupils for a year, he became fellow of Balliol in 1834, Ward being elected at the same time. He was appointed tutor in 1835, and was ordained in 1836. His lectures, especially those in ethics and logic, were highly valued. His personality, solid rather than inspiring, made a strong impression on all who worked with him, and before the completion of his seven years’ tutorship he had become one of the most influential tutors in the university. His journals, which give signs of constantly deepening reflection and fervency, show that he took up the college work as a sacred ministry. In 1839 he passed the summer in Bonn to acquaint himself thoroughly with the language and literature of Germany.
His political opinions were maturing slowly. At Oxford he showed himself favourable to the Reform Bill, and began to formulate ideas on university reform. Yet so gradual was the process that we find him in 1836 writing to a nonconformist minister, T. Morell-Mackenzie, an old Glasgow friend, that he is ‘more of a high churchman than he was,’ and that he disapproved of a petition from Cambridge for the removal of the university tests, and ‘does not see what good any party could gain from such a step.’ In 1838 he declined to be a candidate for the Greek professorship at Glasgow, vacant through the death of Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford, because he was unable to declare his acceptance of the rigid Calvinism of the Westminster confession.
A distinctive feature of his career as an Oxford tutor was his determination to discharge the duties of a clergyman by taking parochial work. Soon after his ordination, in 1836, he undertook the charge of the parish of Baldon, six miles from Oxford. When he visited Bonn in 1839 he at once set up an English service on Sundays, and provided for the continuance of a regular chaplaincy. He also, with three other tutors, commenced a system of religious instruction for the Balliol servants, and offered to create an endowment for its perpetuation.
But that which made the greatest impression on the world was his bearing and conduct in reference to the Oxford movement. Keble’s assize sermon on national apostasy was preached just before Tait took his degree (14 July 1833), and the ‘Tracts’ were begun in September. Tait’s closest friends and colleagues, William George Ward [q. v.]
