Gibbon fancies he was at one time an unscrupulous bacon dealer, and that he finally did considerable business in religious gammon.

Bacon inveighs against the scholastic trifling of his day; Milton talks of the waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the logic of the schools; Cowley complains of being taught words, not things; Gibbon rejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen; Wordsworth contemns the "trade in classic niceties," and roves "in magisterial liberty" by the Cam, as afterwards among the hills.