A dinner was given by Lord Kimberley and the Council
of University College, London, on Wednesday, to a number of gentlemen distinguished in Literature, Science, and Art, at which Lord Sherbrooke delivered some acute remarks on the attempt made in modern times to stuff more knowledge into men's brains than men's brains are at all fitted to receive, and he gave a translation of his own of a fragment of Homer pre- served by Aristotle, which ran to this effect :—
"lie could not reap, he could not sow,
Nor was be wise at all; For very many arts be knew, And badly knew them all."
Lord Sherbrooke applied his remarks specially to the Medical degrees, which of all the degrees of the University of London, he regards apparently as covering the widest area of attain- ments. We doubt very much if .he is right there. Certainly a much larger proportion of candidates are rejected in the examinations for degrees which are not medical. If the medical degree is to be made easier, almost all the degrees must be made easier too, and made even still easier in proportion than the medical degrees ; and this is a sweeping proposal—especially when the new Victoria University is assuring the world, through Professor Roscoe, that there is no chance of its granting degrees on too easy terms—that the danger is that it will rather exact evidence of too high attainments from its candidates.
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