Roderick Young of Paisley, was left a widow in September 1838, when the eldest son was not eighteen years old and the youngest hardly more than an infant. With limited though not straitened means, she faced her maternal responsibilities with placid optimism.
Edward lived in early childhood with his aunt, Miss Jane Caird, 'a woman of strong mind, and most deeply religious,' whose devotion to the boy did not spare him attendance at frequent and long religious services 'four hours at a yoking.' Passing to Greenock Academy in boyhood, he was repelled by the rough methods of Dr. Brown, his first headmaster; but a new rector, David Duff, only twenty-three years old, a fellow-student of Caird's eldest brother John, and afterwards professor of church history in Edinburgh, awoke his intellectual zeal and proved the kindest friend and counsellor. Caird left Greenock Academy to enter the University of Glasgow in the winter session of 1850-1. He attended the classes first in the faculty of arts and afterwards in the faculty of divinity till the end of session 1855-6. He won many distinctions, mainly in the classical department. His intimate circle of classmates included John Nichol [q. v. Suppl. I], two years his senior, and George Rankine Luke. Caird ranked among them as their ' philosopher in chief.'
Owing to weak health he left Glasgow after the session of 1856 for the sea-air of St. Andrews, under the care of his aunt. He was a student in St. Andrews University in 1856-7. Thence he removed in the spring of 1857 to the house of his brother John, who was then minister of the parish of Errol in Perthshire. At Errol Edward's health was re-established. At the same time an intention of entering the ministry of the Church of Scotland was reconsidered and abandoned. His brother's gifts as a preacher, acting on his modest estimate of himself, may have helped to alter his purpose. His reading exerted a more potent influence. Through Carlyle, whose work was eagerly studied by Scottish undergraduates, Caird was led to Goethe and to German literature, whose poetic and philosophical idealism encouraged dissatisfaction with current theology. On his return, however, to Glasgow in 1857 he resumed attendance at classes in divinity in the winter session.
Caird's mind had already turned towards Oxford and the life of a scholar and teacher. On 28 April 1860 he was elected Snell exhibitioner, and in October he matriculated at Balliol College. There he soon made for himself a high reputation. He gained the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship in Hebrew in the university in 1861, and the Jenkyns exhibition in the college next year, being placed in the same year in the first class in classical moderations. In 1863 he obtained a first class in the final classical school. Considerably older than his fellow-undergraduates and with a 'maturity of mind' beyond their reach, Caird found his intimate associates at Oxford amongst graduates of his own age, who welcomed him as one of themselves ; such were John Nichol and Luke, his Glasgow friends, and David Binning Monro, Mr. James Bryce, Mr. A. V. Dicey, and, above all, Thomas Hill Green. With Green, Caird was from the first in closest sympathy, alike in thought and practical aim. Jowett was Caird's tutor, 'watchful and exigent,' but at that time 'eager to direct students to the new sources of thought opened by the German philosophy and theology.' The most powerful of all the educative forces that played upon Caird in Oxford was, however, the 'Old Mortality Club,' formed of young graduates by John Nichol in 1857, and called by that name because 'every member was, or lately had been, in a weak or precarious state of bodily health.' Amongst its original members were Prof. A. V. Dicey, Luke, T. H. Green, Swinburne, and Mr. James Bryce. Caird had the unique honour of being elected when he was still an under-graduate. Many years afterwards Caird spoke of the meetings of the club as 'the very salt of their university life for some of its members,' with its ' free discussion of everything in heaven or earth, the fresh enjoyment of intellectual sympathy, the fearless intercommunion of spirits.' Caird, Green, and Luke were, according to Prof. Dicey, regarded by the club as 'the most remarkable [of its members] both morally and intellectually.'
Friends noted how little in later life Caird's outward aspect changed after his early Oxford days. His mental and spiritual convictions and his attitude to life's problems took at the same period, largely under the club's stimulus, a form which, while it ripened, remained essentially what it had been. He was a 'radical,' like his friend Green, not only in politics, but in religion and philosophy. In his youth he tried to persuade his brother Stuart to join the 'red-shirts' of Garibaldi. Abraham Lincoln was the political hero of his youth, and in his later years he wrote
