Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/365

 ii s. in. MAY 6, MIL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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A Boole of Cambridge Verse. Edited by E. E.

Kellett. (Cambridge University Press.) THIS anthology begins with Chaucer's much- quoted reference to the " melle " at Trumping- ton, and is so conscientiously brought up to date that it even includes the melodious lines with which, four years ago, Mr. Paul England celebrated his return to Christ's College after an absence from it of more than twenty years. But in making his selection Mr. Kellett owns that he he has not been guided only by the degree of merit which individual poems have displayed. He has included verses whose sole claim to atten- tion is their often disputable historical interest. Michael Drayton early in the seventeenth century writes of

Wise Segbert. . . .preparing us the seat Of famous Cambridge

but he frankly confesses that it is only for poetical reasons that he records this tradition, which would place the date of the University's founda- tion at about 630 A.D.

Another poet, however, writing about two centuries before him, says that

Cambridg was founded long or Chryst was borne, and there is nothing to show that this belief was a matter of legend for him.

Richard Corbet has left an amusing picture of Emmanuel, the Puritan college which refused to appear before King James " new be-painted," and with its founders " new be-sainted," as did the rest of them on the occasion of the royal visit in 1614.

The Trinity choir in 1806 was apparently so unmelodious that Byron remarked concerning it : If David, when his toils were ended, Had heard these blockheads sing before him, To us his psalms had ne'er descended, In furious mood he would have tore 'em. Dryden, Ben Jonson, and Gray, as well as Byron, depreciated the University in their verses. But an unexpected objection to it comes from Faber, the hymnologist, who complains that although she is very fair to look upon, Cambridge is voiceless, for she has no bells ! Such a state of affairs to-day is almost incomprehensible.

Cowper indicted in his moral vein the under- graduate of his time. Gamesters and jockeys, he calls them,

Spendthrifts and booted sportsmen, oftener seen With belted waist and pointers at their heels, Than in the bounds of duty.

But then the folly of youth was a theme concern- ing which Cowper was ever ready to take up his pen.

" The Union Club of rhetorical fame," which ' was held at the Red Lion Inn," in 1823 is described by Praed in his best society-verse manner. Macaulay is depicted with " his arms and his metaphors crossed." Praed was ever a master of neat brevity.

Humorous verse plays a fair part in the book in view of the exigencies of copyright. Two poems come from Calverley's pen. Mr. Andrew Lang contributes a delightful ' Ballade of the Girton Girl,' whose " forte 's to evaluate IT." Mr. Owen Seaman describes an Oxford and Cam-

bridge Ladies' Hockey Match, and his impres- sions upon returning to his college in middle age. A. C. Hilton's parody of Lewis Carroll's ' Walrus and the Carpenter ' is admirable.

Concerning a certain examination paper upon which competitors were at work in the Senate House he says :

But though they wrote it all by rote,

They did not write it right.

And afterwards, when it is time for the " viva voce,"

Two undergraduates came up,

And slowly took a seat ;

They knit their brows, and bit their thumbs,

As if they found them sweet ;

And this was odd, because you know

Thumbs are not good to eat ! The river, and in a lesser degree King's Chapel seem to be the favourite themes for the eulogies, of Cambridge poets. Many extravagant thinga have been said concerning the former, and not the least absurd of these is Mr. Alfred Austin's comparison of a drifting boat to a dreaming water-lily. The latter subject, however, has been immortalized by Wordsworth's sonnet, which was itself written under

that branching roof

Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering.

Wordsworth is the only poet who has devoted many pages of verse to the University at which he received his education. Speaking in his ' Prelude ' of the winter nights on which he used to walk under the lofty elms of the college groves, he says that " scarcely Spenser's self could have* more tranquil visions in his youth. . . .than I be- held." But of the rost of the Cambridge bards, as Mr. Kellett says in his preface, " not many have thought it well to commemorate in verse their ancient mother ; and fewer still have written of her in their best manner."

Therefore the book is a disappointment to the lover of poetry, who would have preferred to its four hundred and forty pages a smaller volume maintaining a higher standard. Still, Mr. Kellett has shown admirable industry, and has secured a good collection of illustrations, while his notes at the end are instructive, and certainly needed by the present generation of readers.

Visitation of Ireland. Edited by Frederick

Arthur Crisp. Vol. V. (Privately printed.) THE fifth volume of Mr. Crisp's ' Visitation of Ireland ' contains the pedigrees of twenty-six well-known Irish families during the period from the end of the eighteenth century up to the present time. The pedigrees include that of the Earl of Lucan of Balaclava fame ; also that of another branch of the same family, the Binghams of Bingham Castle, co. Mayo. Another interesting pedigree is that of the family of Uniacke of Castle- town, co. Cork. The branch of the family shown in this volume begins with a younger son, Richard John Uniacke, who settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1781, and from whom is descended Mr. R. G. Fitzgerald Uniacke, the well-known antiquary.

The volume, as usual, contains several engrav- ings of book-plates and armorial bearings beauti- fully executed.