Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/145

 ii s. vii. FEB. 15, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

139

eight years, " he employed an amanuensis whose Latinity was evidently of the most primitive order, whilst his (? her) punctuation was most erratic." These peculiar entries have ben reproduced as they stand.

Three of the names on this roll belong to the roll of honour of England at large. William Thomson " ad mensam Pensionariorum ad- mittitur " 6 April, 1841 " Son of D r James Thomson, Professor of Mathematics, Glasgow. Rec. by his father," as the Tutor's Book has it. He took his B.A. degree (Second Wrangler, First Smith's Prizeman) in 1845. As an under- graduate he was an active oarsman, we are told, and a winner of the Colquhoun Sculls. He was President also of the University Musical Society. Elected Fellow in 1846, and in the same year Mathematical Lecturer, he vacated his fellowship by marriage in 1852. He was re-elected Fellow in 1872. He is numbered among the " bene- factors," having given Peterhouse the first installation of electric light made in Cambridge, and having for several years before his death contributed 100?. a year to the College Fund in aid of students of Natural Science.

In 1733 " Jul. 4 to Thomas Gray Middlesexiensis in Schola publica Etonensi institutus annosque natus 18 [petente Tutoresuo] censetur admissus," Sa-. Next year Gray was Cos in Scholar, and in 1735 Hales Scholar. In 1742 he was Fellow Commoner, occupying rooms, next Trumpington Street, in the Fellows' Buildings then recently built, until 1756, when, in consequence of the behaviour towards him of his neighbours, he migrated to Pembroke College. Through the influence of the Duke of Graf ton and Richard Stonehewer the Duke's private tutor at Peterhouse the two men who " lived for fifty-three years in the most uninterrupted attachment, confidence and friendship for each other " Gray was, in 1768, made Regius Professor of History. Behind him on the Peterhouse stage we descry the figure of Robert Antrobus, his uncle, to whose shaping hand the poet's career was so largely indebted. Of the books and MSS. connected with Gray in the College Library the most precious is a copy of the 1768 edition of the ' Poems,' containing MS. additions in his handwriting, and among them his mother's epitaph.

Richard Crashaw, admitted at Pembroke in 1631, and there B.A. in 1634, was elected Fellow of Peterhouse in 1635. He was ejected by Parlia- ment in 1644, but before then had betaken himself to Rome, where he was found by John Bargrave in the same case with himself as to ejection who notes that he found no fewer than four men Fellows of Peterhouse who were " revolters to the Roman Church," Crashaw among them. It is noted here that he was tutor of Farrer CoUett admitted 1636 ; Ramsey Fellow 1642 who also in 1644, for refusing the Covenant, was ejected from his Fellowship.

This piece of work was well worth doing, and we hardly see how it could have been better done. With "a minimum of words the compiler has contrived to convey not only a mass of curious and interesting " factual " information, but also his own lively sense of the many-sided humour nd pathos which belongs to such a record as this.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Chosen by Arthur Quiller-Couch. (Oxford, Clarendon

Press.)

VERY naturally Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch spends, a few words in a pleasant Introduction in justi- fying an arduous enterprise, which, however,, assuredly needs no justification. All lovers of poetry must be grateful to him for this anthology r not least those of them who here and there dissent from him, for to miss in a book of this kind some particular favourite is to have the slighted one's excellences all the more vividly borne home to- one.

What to do in the matter of the great poets of this period must have been no easy problem to solve. We are glad to profess ourselves well' content with Sir Arthur's mode of solution. He has allotted to them more pages than to their fellows, yet not so many more as to crowd out lesser singers, or even to cause an ignorant reader to conjecture from this book their full, separate significance in English literature. This does not seem to us unreasonable, for the half- score or so of poets that may now be considered classics are household names, and their work accessible enough. It is for Lord de Tabley, for many an Irish poem, and for the treasures drawn from the work of writers still living, that we- thank him most. Here and there, it is true, we- would have made a different selection. Thus we would have given 'The Strayed Reveller,' or ' Rugby Chapel,' or ' Obermann,' instead of ' Thyrsis,' in order to show another side of Matthew Arnold's power, ' Thyrsis ' being so like ' The Scholar-Gipsy ' ; and, to take an example from a less conspicuous poet, the best thing, in our opinion, that Skipsey did an example of that highest form of poetry which is not "poetical" the eight lines about the miner going to his work in the morning :

And with a whistle shut the door I may not ope again has no place here.

We suppose that it is because they are so well known that neither ' The House Beautiful ' nor ' The Celestial Surgeon ' is given us as repre- sentative of Stevenson.

Occasionally we find Sir Arthur too indulgent : we do not see what claim the lines of Emily Henrietta Hickeyhave to be included in a collec- tion such as this ; nor yet another ' Song ' by James Joyce ; and we might go on to add some half-a-dozen others, but there is no need to be so far ungracious. We will only say that we should gladly have seen their places taken by a poem or two of Miss Bunston's and bv some of Father Tabb's quatrains.

Yet the wealth gathered here in slender com- pass is surprising, and some treasures may be singled out as peculiarly welcome ; such are, for instance, William Bell Scott's splendid ' Witch's Ballad ' ; the three short lyrics by John Mase- field ; the skilful ' Orchard by the Shore ' of Elinor Sweetman ; the examples from George Daiiey (best of them ' The Phcenix ') ; and those, again, from Mangan. We notice that in the haunting last stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's ' To One in Paradise ' we read here

Are where thy grey eye glances. There is a variant " dark " for grey : has it any authority ? The selection from Poe struck