tages, nor Milton's Cambridge career, yet his noble ideals might have beautified Paradise Lost, and his masterly personifications can rival those of the Faerie Queene. No one who reads the chorus in Goddwyn, the soliloquies of Celmonde, or the Song of the Willow, in Ella, the Bristowe Tragedie, or the Elegy on Phillips, can fail to regret the dulness, the self-interestedness, and the unpitying doom-as hard tɔ us as him-which, linked with his own obstinate but not ignoble pride, were the destruction of Chatterton. History, it has been said, is a history of society, not of mere kings. Think, had Chatterton lived to write that History of England, or even of London, bringing to bear on it the almost prophetic powers of the poet, the mind that had revelled in the revival of antiquity,-what gift of genius, imperishable as his own poems, might he not have left? If, as his plays can warrant, he had given scope to that luxuriant fancy, aided by the maturer intellect of later life, what Midsummer Night's Dreams might not he have fashioned? Had he even continued his antique labours, and given to his other fictitious authors Ischam, Abbot John, Ecca of Hereford, as much as he gave to Rowley, how might he have shewn that Merrie Englande had not sobered and saddened under the critic's lash of Boileau, but that there was even in this dry artificial 18th century, a foretaste of the Wordsworths, the Shellys, the Keats, and the Tennysons to be, and that to be a poet is at any rate to have a nature capable of understanding, and therefore feeling and enjoying, the noble and the good. Surely Clifton and its scenery is sacred ground! With what noble conceptions may not he have peopled the country that breathes around us. Even to murky Bristol he has given, boy as he was, many noble memories. As Saxons and Englishmen we rejoice that a great poet has completed for us the Arthurian legends; but while we see the Idylls of the King, embodied as whole, in A poem round and finished as a star, there is at least good reason why, as Cliftonians, we should feel a grateful pride that Bristol too has had a poet who could revive and purify the past,—that Bristol, too, has at any rate a history and a scenery which could inspire the mind of genius with high thoughts and manly simplicity. N. B. B "THE VICTIM," Dedicated to the "Starving Girl" Committee. AMAZEMENT on the people fell, "Or is she cheating us? "Were she our nearest, "Were she our dearest, "We would be answered, II. The horror grew, as rumour flew, At last one spake with a sudden cry, "Have they at Guy's, III. The nurses went by heath and hill, The child was not many summers old, Each nurse beheld her, And cried with glee, The eighth day came, and each one smiled, "Is she a humbug? or is she diseased? "But our thirst for knowledge, it must be appeased, "So I pray you tell the truth to me." "Have you guarded the girl? "Have you starved her till dead? "The lies she has said ?" V. The nurse bent low with clouded brow, "For now grim death has answered thee?" And yet they said, "It has ended well, "For truth is dear, and life is dear, "And which is the dearest we cannot tell." They all were happy And blandly smiled, "We've proved she cheated, "That fasting child." R. DILEMMAS. THE comparison between the growth of societies and individuals is very ancient and well worn: but it is nevertheless sometimes startling to find it verified in places where we should naturally have most expected it to fail. If there is anything to which the idea of growth seems utterly foreign, -which seem stolidly and eternally immoveable and stationary, it is the English Universities. Especially Oxford seems to have been blest with the gift of perpetual old age; we cannot conceive this in its youth, and the only theory about its origin that seems tenable is that like its patron saint Athena it must have sprung fully developed from the brain of Zeus. Yet such was not the case: it was once a child and went through childish diseases, and Oxford during the scholastic period is a very interesting case of moral measles. Long before the question whether a national church ought to be allowed or not, or whether the amusement of bear bating was immoral or not, or whether & u could or could not govern a subjunctive, had troubled the mind of England, the learned leisure of the Oxford Dons was disturbed by this question:-"A man drives a pig to market: is the man the cause of the pig's going to market, or the pig of the man's?" Huge folios were written on this momentous subject, and ancient doctors on each side abused their opponents in the choicest Latin: even the undergraduates were stirred to strife; large bands of either party used to parade the streets, and if they met a small band of their opponents they would attack them. Curious questions used to be set for Smalls, to test the skill of the undergraduates in such discussion-some of which we now extract from their papers. A great favourite was the Biblical one,- 66 Epimenides the Cretan said, "The Cretans are always liars.' Comment on this." If the Cretans were always liars Epimenides was: therefore his statement was untrue: therefore the Cretans were not liars: but Epimenides was a * The original questions were set in Greek or Latin, and lose a great deal in translation. Cretan, therefore he spoke the truth, and the Cretans were liars,- -so that we cannot escape either way. Here is another of very much the same sort, Does he?" If "A man steps forth and says 'I lie.' he lies he has not spoken the truth, and therefore does not lie: if he speaks the truth he said that he lied, and therefore he lies therefore if he speaks the truth he lies, and if he lies he speaks the truth. The following was very popular, as having a kind of antique twang about it, and pleasantly combining the associations of the Iliad and Æsop's fables, "Said a tortoise to Achilles, 'If thou wert to give me a start of one hundred yards, thou couldst not catch me.' "But,' replied Achilles, I can run a hundred yards whilst thou runnest ten, and should I not then catch thee?' "No,' answered the tortoise, for whilst thou runnest one hundred, I shall run ten: and whilst thou runnest ten I shall run one: and whilst thou runnest one I shall run one-tenth part of one: and so we shall run for ever, and though thou mayest come very near me yet thou wilt never catch me.' "By Heracles,' said Achilles, thou beatest me in words, but if thou wert to run I should catch thee.' "Which is right?" Here is another classical one of a more ingenious kind: "Callimachus, a rhetorician of Athens, taught Rhodius, his pupil, on condition that if Rhodius won his first suit he should pay a thousand drachmae. But when Rhodius had learned rhetoric he refused to plead any suit. So at last Callimachus sued him for the money, and Rhodius defended himself. "Then said Callimachus to Rhodius:- Surely now I shall get my money.' "Nay, but I do not think so,' replied Rhodius. 666 "If the Judges decree that thou shalt pay me, I shall get it,' said Callimachus: and also if they decide against me, thou wilt have won thy first cause and must still pay.' Nay, but thou art over hasty for reason,' said Rhodius. If the Judges decree that I shall not pay, I shall not but and if they decide for you, I shall not have won my first cause, and therefore am not indebted to you: so that in neither case shall I pay.' "Which position do you prefer, and why?" |