HE could not give the requisite time to his pupils, and, in fact, hardly knew some of them by sight. . . . One day he gave his servant a list of names of certain of his pupils whom he wished to see at a wine-party after Hall, a form of entertainment then much in fashion. Among the names was that of an undergraduate who had died some weeks before.
'Mr. Smith, sir; why, he died last term, sir!' objected the man. 'You ought to tell me when my pupils die', replied the tutor sternly; and Whewell could be stern when he was vexed.
John Willis Clark, Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere (1900), pp. 42-43
SOMEONE having said of Whewell that his forte was science,
'Yes,' assented Sydney Smith, 'and his foible is omniscience [a knowall].