Trin Coll. ^<1>
Tuesday

My dear Father

I am going to take a step which I do not think will please you exactly though it is reasonable. In short I think I shall give up the Tripos, ^<2> and am going to speak to my tutor tomorrow on the subject, with a view to taking my degree at the next examination for ordinary degree. The plan of reading which prevails here which a man who wishes to take honours must go through no knocks me up thoroughly & has always done so. You have no idea of the state of distraction it sometimes gets me into without any prospect of anything particular coming of it eventually. in short I can not do it. There are heaps & heaps of things to look up and I never should be able to get them up. If I went on, and if I did not get gulphed I do not think I should be higher than a Junior Op. if I was that & I had would as soon take an ordinary degree. If I had had the average bodily strength of my contemporaries I should be higher and I if I haven’t, it is no fault of mine, but I have proved amply that hard reading is a thing which I am not fit for now, whatever I may have been formerly –

Your affec son
Charles.

I know that people set a good deal of importance by a good or even a fair degree. [illegible deletion] but I havent a chance of taking such a degree as my natural abilities would have enabled me to do. could I have used them properly, and If this is to a certain extent my own fault it is certainly not altogether so, [illegible deletion]. Reading these sort of subjects is a thing which I cannot do any longer, and which though I have tried pretty hard I have done very little of since I have been up here

[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
11 Gt Stuart St
Edinburgh

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Notes:

1. Trinity College, Cambridge.

2. Cambridge honours examination.