189.
-- Although Froude was probably happier at Oxford than he had been at any time since 1874, the regulations of his professorship worried him, as they had worried Stubbs and Freeman.

They seemed to have been drawn on the assumption that a Professor would evade his duties, and behave like an idle undergraduate.

Froude, on the contrary, interpreted them in the sense most adverse to himself.

The authorities of the place, or some of them, would have had him spare his pains, and colourably evade the statute by talking instead of lecturing.

But Froude was too conscientious to seek relief in this way.