The boyhood of Richard Milnes may be passed over in a sentence. A serious illness when he was ten years old put an end to his father’s intention of sending him to Harrow, and he was educated at home, or near it, till he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1827. He was entered as a fellow-commoner—a position well suited to the training he had received, for it gave him the society of men older than himself, while he was looking out for congenial friends among men of his own age. His college tutor was Mr Whewell, and it was doubtless at his suggestion that he went to read classics with Thirlwall, then one of the resident Fellows. On one of his later visits to Cambridge Lord Houghton told an interesting story of their relations as pupil and instructor. After a few days’ trial Thirlwall said to him: ‘You will never be a scholar. It is no use our reading classics together. Have you ever read the Bible?’ ‘Yes, I have read it, but not critically,’ was the reply. ‘Very well,’ said Thirlwall, ‘ then let us begin with Genesis.’ And so the rest of the term was spent in the study of the Old Testament. Mr Reid is, no doubt, right in saying that, for ‘the making of his mind,’ Milnes was more deeply indebted to Thirlwall than to any other man. But Thirlwall was not merely the Gamaliel at whose feet Milnes was willing to sit; he became the chosen friend of his heart. Lord Houghton was once asked to name the most remarkable man whom he had known in his long experience. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied ‘Thirlwall’; and the numerous letters which Mr Reid has printed show that the friendship was equally strong on both sides.
The most picturesque of Roman historians said of one of his heroes that he was _felix opportunitate mortis_; it might be said of Milnes, with regard to Cambridge, that he was _felix opportunitate vitæ_. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a period in which so many men who afterwards made their mark in the world have been gathered together there; and, with a happy facility for discovering and attracting to himself whatever was eminent and worth knowing, it was not long before he became intimate with the best of them. Nearly forty years afterwards, in 1866, on the occasion of the opening of the new rooms of the Union Society, he commemorated these friends of his early years in a speech of singular beauty and sincerity: