Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 3

Now that I am talking about school-fellows, several names call for special mention. As I disliked athletics, it follows that I did not adore athletes. I can safely say that I never admired a boy because of his athletic skill, though I have admired many in spite of it. Probably Sidney Pelham, Archdeacon of Norfolk, who was in the Harrow Eleven in 1867 and 1868, and the Oxford Eleven in 1871, will never see this book; so I may safely say that I have seldom envied anyone as keenly as I envied him, when Dr. Butler, bidding him farewell before the whole school, thanked him for "having set an example which all might be proud to follow--unfailing sweetness of temper, and perfect purity of life."

In one respect, the most conspicuous of my school-fellows was H.R.H.

Prince Thomas of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, nephew of Victor Emmanuel, and now an Admiral in the Italian Navy. He came to Harrow in 1869, and lived with Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Arnold. He was elected King of Spain by a vote of the Cortes on the 3rd of October 1869. He was quite a popular boy, and no one had the slightest grudge against him; but, for all that, everyone made a point of kicking him, in the hope of being able to say in after-life that they had kicked the King of Spain. Unfortunately Victor Emmanuel, fearing dynastic complications, forbade him to accept the Crown; so he got all the Harrow kicks and none of the Spanish half-pence. When I entered Harrow, the winner of all the cla.s.sical prizes was Andrew Graham Murray, now Lord Dunedin and Lord President of the Court of Session; a most graceful scholar, and also a considerable mathematician. Just below him was Walter Leaf, to whom no form of learning came amiss; who was as likely to be Senior Wrangler as Senior Cla.s.sic, and whose performances in Physical Science won the warm praise of Huxley. Of the same standing as these were Arthur Evans, the Numismatist, Frank Balfour, the Physiologist, and Gerald Rendall, Head-master of Charterhouse. Among my contemporaries the most distinguished was Charles Gore, whose subsequent career has only fulfilled what all foresaw; and just after him came (to call them by their present names) Lord Crewe, Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Spencer, Mr.

Justice Barton of the Irish Bench, and Mr. Walter Long, in whom Harrow may find her next Prime Minister. Walter Sichel was at seventeen the cleverest school-boy whom I have ever known. Sir Henry McKinnon obtained his Commission in the Guards while he was still in the Fifth Form.

Pakenham Beatty was the Swinburnian of the school, then, as now, a true Poet of Liberty. Ion Keith-Falconer, Orientalist and missionary, was a saint in boyhood as in manhood. Edward Eyre seemed foreordained to be what in London and in Northumberland he has been--the model Parish-Priest; and my closest friend of all was Charles Baldwyn Childe-Pemberton, who, as Major Childe, fell at the battle of Spion Kop, on a spot now called, in honour of his memory, "Childe's Hill." _De minimis non curat Respublica_; which, being interpreted, signifies--_The Commonwealth_ will not care to know the names of the urchins who f.a.gged for me.[12] But I cherish an ebony match-box carved and given to me by one of these ministering spirits, as a proof that, though my laziness may have made me exacting, my exactions were not brutal.

On the 15th of June, 1871, Harrow School celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of its foundation. Harrovians came from every corner of the globe to take part in this Tercentenary Festival. The arrangements were elaborated with the most anxious care. The Duke of Abercorn, affectionately and appropriately nicknamed "Old Splendid," presided over a banquet in the School-Yard; and the programme of the day's proceedings had announced, rather to the terror of intending visitors, that after luncheon there would be "speeches, interspersed with songs, from three hundred and fifty of the boys." The abolition of the second comma dispelled the dreadful vision of three-hundred-and-fifty school-boy-speeches, and all went merry as a marriage-bell--all, except the weather. It seemed as if the acc.u.mulated rain of three centuries were discharged on the devoted Hill. It was raining when we went to the early celebration in the Chapel; it was raining harder when we came out.

At the culminating moment of the day's proceedings, when Dr. Vaughan was proposing "Prosperity to Harrow," the downpour and the thunder drowned the speaker's voice; and, when evening fell on the sodden cricket-ground, the rain extinguished the fireworks.

On that same cricket-ground nine days later, in the golden afternoon of Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game.

On the 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows followed him to his resting-place in the Churchyard on the Hill, and I believe we unanimously felt that he whom we had lost was the one, of all our number, of whom we could say, with the surest confidence, that he was fit to pa.s.s, without a moment's warning, into the invisible World.

_Beati mundo corde_.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Writing to John Murray in 1832, Byron said--"There is a spot in the Churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the Hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours as a boy: this was my favourite spot."

[5] The Rev. E. M. Young.

[6] Herga is the Anglo-Saxon name of Harrow.

[7] Charlotte Seymour, Countess Spencer, died 1903.

[8] The name is borrowed from "Sybil." The bearer of it was an ancient physician, who had doctored all the famous people of his time, beginning with "Pamela."

[9] Mr. R. de C. Welch.

[10] _The Hill._ Chapter vi.

[11] Some authorities say that it was the last on record.

[12] This paper appeared in _The Commonwealth_.

IV

OXFORD

"For place, for grace, and for sweet companee, Oxford is Heaven, if Heaven on Earth there be."

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

The faithful student of "Verdant Green" will not have forgotten that Charlie Larkyns, when introducing his Freshman-friend to the sights of Oxford, called his attention to a mystic inscription on a wall in Oriel Lane. "You see that? Well, that's one of the plates they put up to record the Vice's height. F.P.--7 feet, you see: the initials of his name--Frederick Plumptre!" "He scarcely seemed so tall as that," replied Verdant, "though certainly a tall man. But the gown makes a difference, I suppose."

Dr. Plumptre was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford from 1848 to 1851, and Master of University College for thirty-four years. He died in 1870, and the College thereupon elected the Rev. G. G. Bradley, then Head-master of Marlborough, and afterwards Dean of Westminster, to the vacant post. It was an unfortunate choice. Mr. Bradley was a man of many gifts and virtues, and a successful schoolmaster; but the methods which had succeeded at Marlborough were not adapted to Oxford, and he soon contrived to get at loggerheads both with Dons and with Undergraduates.

However, there existed at that time--and I daresay it exists still--a nefarious kind of trades-unionism among the Headmasters of Public Schools; and, as Bradley had been a Head-master, all the Head-masters advised their best pupils to try the scholarships at University College.

So far as I had any academical connexions, they were exclusively with Trinity, Cambridge; and my father was as ignorant of Oxford as myself.

All I knew about it was that it was the source and home of the Oxford movement, which some of my friends at Harrow had taught me to admire.

Two or three of those friends were already there, and I wished to rejoin them; but, as between the different Colleges, I was fancy-free; so when, early in 1872, Dr. Butler suggested that I should try for a scholarship at University, I a.s.sented, reserving myself, in the too probable event of failure, for Christ Church. However, I was elected at University on the 24th of February, 1872, and went into residence there on the 11th of the following October. The Vice-Chancellor who matriculated me was the majestic Liddell, who, with his six feet of stately height draped in scarlet, his "argent aureole" of white hair, and his three silver maces borne before him, always helped me to understand what Sydney Smith meant when he said, of some nonsensical proposition, that no power on earth, save and except the Dean of Christ Church, should induce him to believe it. As I write, I see the announcement of Mrs. Liddell's death; and my mind travels back to the drawing-room and lawns of the Deanery at Christ Church, and the garland of beautiful faces

"Decking the matron temples of a place So famous through the world."

The 13th of October was my first Sunday in Oxford, and my friend Charles Gore took me to the Choral Eucharist at Cowley St. John, and afterwards to luncheon with the Fathers. So began my acquaintance with a Society of which I have always been a grateful admirer. But more exciting experiences were at hand: on the 20th of October it was Liddon's turn, as Select Preacher, to occupy the pulpit at St. Mary's. The impressions of that, my first University sermon, have never faded from my mind. A bright autumn morning, the yellow sunlight streaming in upon the densely crowded church, the long array of scarlet-robed doctors, the preacher's beautiful face looking down from the high pulpit, with anxious brow and wistful gaze. And then the rolling Latin hymn, and then the Bidding Prayer, and then the pregnant text--_He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of G.o.d abideth on him_. Are we listening to St. John the Baptist or St. John the Evangelist? The preacher holds that we are listening to the Evangelist, and says that the purpose of St. John's Gospel is condensed into his text. "If to believe in Him is life, to have known and yet to reject him is death. There is no middle term or state between the two.... In fact, this stern, yet truthful and merciful, claim makes all the difference between a Faith and a theory."

And now there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers alike take breath. Some instinct a.s.sures us that we are just coming to the crucial point. The preacher resumes: "A statement of this truth in other terms is at present occasioning a painful controversy, which it would be better in this place to pa.s.s over in silence if too much was not at stake to warrant a course from which I shall only depart with sincere reluctance. Need I say that I allude to the vexed question of the Athanasian Creed?" The great discourse which was thus introduced, with its strong argument for the retention of the Creed as it stands, has long been the property of the Church, and there is no need to recapitulate it. But the concluding words, extolling "the high and rare grace of an intrepid loyalty to known truth," spoke with a force of personal appeal which demands commemoration: "To be forced back upon the central realities of the faith which we profess; to learn, better than ever before, what are the convictions which we dare not surrender at any cost; to renew the freshness of an early faith, which affirms within us, clearly and irresistibly, that the one thing worth thinking of, worth living for, if need were, worth dying for, is the unmutilated faith of Jesus Christ our Lord,--these may be the results of inevitable differences, and, if they are, they are blessings indeed."[13]

The same Sunday was marked by another unforgettable experience--my first visit to St. Barnabas'. The church was then just three years old. Bishop Wilberforce had consecrated it on the 19th of October, 1869, and made this characteristic note in his diary:--"Disagreeable service. Acolyte running about. Paste squares for bread, etc., but the church a great gift." Three years later, a boy fresh from Harrow, and less sensitively Protestant than the good Bishop, not only thought "the church a great gift," but enjoyed the "acolyte running about," and found the whole service the most inspiring and uplifting worship in which he had ever joined. My impressions of it are as clear as yesterday's--the unadorned simplicity of the fabric, emphasizing by contrast the blaze of light and colour round the altar; the floating cloud of incense; the expressive and unfussy ceremonial; the straightforward preaching; and, most impressive of all, the large congregation of men, old and young, rich and poor, undergraduates and artisans, all singing Evangelical hymns with one heart and one voice. It was, if ever there was on earth, congregational worship; and I, for one, have never seen its like. The people's pride in the church was very characteristic: they habitually spoke of it as "our Barnabas." The clergy and the worshippers were a family, and the church was a home.

At the Dedication Festival of 1872, there was a strong list of preachers, including W. J. E. Bennett, of Frome, and Edward King, then Princ.i.p.al of Cuddesdon. But the sermon which made an indelible impression on me was preached by R. W. Randall, then vicar of All Saints, Clifton, and afterwards Dean of Chichester. It was indeed a memorable performance. "Performance" is the right word, for, young as one was, one realized instinctively the wonderful art and mastery and technical perfection of the whole. There was the exquisitely modulated voice, sinking lower, yet becoming more distinct, whenever any specially moving topic was touched; the restrained, yet emphatic action--I can see that uplifted forefinger still--and the touch of personal reminiscence at the close, so managed as to give the sense that we were listening to an elder brother who, thirty years before, had pa.s.sed through the same experiences, so awfully intermingled of hope and tragedy, which now lay before us on the threshold of our Oxford life. It was, in brief, a sermon never to be forgotten; it was "a night to be much remembered unto the Lord."

Some thirty years later, I was introduced to Dean Randall at a London dinner-party. After dinner, I drew my chair towards him, and said, "Mr.

Dean, I have always wished to have an opportunity of thanking you for a sermon which you preached at St. Barnabas', Oxford, at the Dedication Festival, 1872." The Dean smiled, with the graceful pleasure of an old man honoured by a younger one, and said, "Yes? What was the text?" "The text I have long forgotten, but I remember the subject." "And what was that?" "It was the insecurity of even the best-founded hopes." "Rather a well-worn theme," said the Dean, with a half-smile. "But not, sir," I said, "as you handled it. You told us, at the end of the sermon, that you remembered a summer afternoon when you were an undergraduate at Christ Church, and were sitting over your Thucydides close to your window, grappling with a long and complicated pa.s.sage which was to be the subject of next morning's lecture; and that, glancing for a moment from your book, you saw the two most brilliant young Christ Church men of the day going down to bathe in the Isis. You described the gifts and graces of the pair, who, between them, seemed to combine all that was best and most beautiful in body and mind and soul. And then you told us how, as your friends disappeared towards Christ Church Meadows, you returned to your work; and only were roused from it two hours later, when a confused noise of grief and terror in the quadrangle below attracted your attention, and you saw the dead bodies of Gaisford and Phillimore borne past your window from their 'watery bier' at Sandford Lasher."

On Advent Sunday, December 1, I saw and heard Dr. Pusey for the first time. He was then in broken health; but he gathered all his physical and mental energies for a great sermon on "The Responsibility of Intellect in Matters of Faith." The theme of this sermon was that Intellect is a great trust confided to us by G.o.d; that we are responsible to Him for the use of it; and that we must exercise it in submission to His revealed Will. What He has declared, that it is our duty to believe. Our Lord Himself had uttered the most solemn warning against wilful unbelief; the Athanasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and the storm which a.s.sailed the Creed was really directed against the revealed Truth of G.o.d. "This tornado will, I trust, by G.o.d's mercy, soon pa.s.s; it is a matter of life and death. To remove those words of warning, or the Creed because it contains them, would be emphatically to teach our people that it is _not_ necessary to salvation to believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in One G.o.d as He has made Himself known to us."

Immediately after delivering himself of this great apology for the Faith, Pusey went abroad for the benefit of his health, and did not return to Oxford till the Summer Term. I well remember the crowd of ancient disciples, who had missed their accustomed interview at Christmas, thronging his door in Christ Church, like the impotent folk at the Pool of Bethesda.

Another reminiscence, and of a very different kind, belongs to my first Term. Dean Stanley had been nominated as Select Preacher, and the old-fashioned High Churchmen made common cause with the Low Churchmen to oppose his appointment. There was a prodigious clamour, but Dr. Pusey held aloof from the agitation, believing--and in this he was conspicuously right--that "opposition would only aggravate the evil by enlisting the enthusiasm of the young." The vote was taken, in an unusually crowded Convocation, on the 11th of December. It was a noteworthy and rather an amusing scene, and was well described by an eyewitness.[14] "Oxford was fairly startled from the serenity which usually marks the f.a.g-end of the Michaelmas Term by a sudden irruption of the outer world. Recognitions took place at every street-corner. The hotels were put upon their mettle. The porters' lodges of the Colleges were besieged, and Boffin's Refreshment Rooms ran over with hungry parsons from the country. As an evidence of the interest which the question of Dean Stanley's appointment excited beyond the walls of the University, I may mention that even the guards and porters at the railway hallooed to each other to know "the state of the betting"; but even they did not seem quite to have calculated on the matter being so warmly taken up in London and by the country at large." At half-past one o'clock the bell of St. Mary's gave notice to the combatants to prepare for the fray, and immediately the floor of the Theatre was sprinkled with representative men of all the schools. The non-residents appeared in gowns of various degrees of rustiness, some with chimney-pot hats and some with wide-awakes. The early comers conversed in small groups, hugging instinctively those sides of the building on which were written respectively _Placet_ or _Non-Placet_, giving thereby an inkling of how they meant to vote. The gathering increased every moment, and soon the Doctors in their scarlet began to dot the seats around the Vice-Chancellor's chair. Prince Leopold, by right of his royalty, entered the sacred enclosure with Dr. Acland, and afterwards took his seat among the Doctors. Before two o'clock every inch of the floor was full, the occupants standing in antic.i.p.ation of the coming encounter.

"Still they gravitated towards their respective voting-doors, and on the _Placet_ side one descried the scholarly face of Professor Jowett, the sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the well-known physiognomy of Professor Max Muller. On the opposite side Mr. Burgon was marshalling his forces, and Dean Goulburn, from the Doctors' benches, looked out over the seething ma.s.s of M.A.'s below him." At two o'clock the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith commenced proceedings in Latin, which must have been extremely edifying to the ladies who, in large numbers, occupied the Strangers' Gallery, backed by a narrow fringe of Undergraduates. The object of the Convocation was stated as being the appointment of Select Preachers, and the names were then submitted to the Doctors and Masters for approval. "_Placetne igitur vobis huic nomini a.s.sentire?_" being the form in which the question was proposed.

The name first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a faint buzz in the a.s.sembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he pa.s.sed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant voice, he read out as "Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley."

Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the _Placet_ side, cheers and waving of trencher-caps; on the _Non-Placet_ side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as graduate, mingled shouts of _Placet_ and _Non_, with an accompaniment of cheers and hisses; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell p.r.o.nounced the magic words _Fiat scrutinium_. Thereupon the two Proctors proceeded first of all to take the votes of the Doctors on their benches; and, when this was done, they took their station at the doors labelled _Placet_ and _Non-placet_. During the process of polling we had an opportunity of criticizing the const.i.tuents of that truly exceptional gathering. It was certainly not true to say, as some said, that only the younger Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite a fair proportion of white and bald heads on the _Placet_ side. "The country contingent was not so numerous as one had expected, and I do not believe that all of these went out at the _Non-placet_ door. Evidently, parties were pretty evenly balanced; and, when the _Non-placets_ had all recorded their votes there were about twenty-five left on Dean Stanley's side, which probably would have nearly represented the actual majority, but, at the last moment, some stragglers, who had only arrived in Oxford by 2.25 train hurried in, and so swelled the numbers. One late-comer arrived without his academicals, and some zealous supporter of the Dean had to denude himself, and pa.s.s his cap and gown outside to enable this gentleman to vote." Soon it was over. The Proctors presented their lists to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid breathless silence, p.r.o.nounced the fateful words--"_Majori parti placet._" Then there was indeed a cheer, which rang through the building from bas.e.m.e.nt to upper gallery, and was taken up outside in a way that reminded one of the trial of the Seven Bishops. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly drowned. Oxford had given its approval to Dean Stanley, the numbers being--_Placet_, 349; _Non-placet_, 287.

When the fuss was over, Liddon wrote thus to a friend:--"It was a discreditable nomination; but, having been made, ought, in the interests of the Faith, to have been allowed to pa.s.s _sub silentio_; for, if opposed, it must either be defeated or affirmed by Convocation--a choice, _me judice_, of nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours of a petty martyrdom.

To have affirmed it is, I fear, to have given a new impetus to the barren, unspiritual negations which he represents."

I went up to Oxford well supplied with introductions. Dr. Cradock, the well-beloved Princ.i.p.al of Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the world, devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket and boating, had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of _Robert Elsmere_. Dr., afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend of many undergraduate generations. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I have always thought one of the grandest sermons in the English language--Liddon's "Worth of Faith in a Life to Come."[15] The Warden of Keble and Mrs. Talbot (then the young wife of the young Head of a very young College) were, as they have been for 40 years, the kindest and most constant of friends. Dr.

Bright, Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was a lavish entertainer, "with an intense dramatic skill in telling a story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages of d.i.c.kens (and of Scott), with shouts of glee, and outpourings of play and fancy and allusion." But I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone ought to know Dr. Holland's "Personal Studies" by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor of Latin, was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, and Mrs. Palmer was a most genial hostess. Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I suppose, the most accomplished man of his time;[16] yet he lives, not by his performances in the unthinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics, but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest for the University.

Those were the days of open voting, and Smith was watching the votes in Gladstone's interest. Professor ----, who never could manage his h's, wished to vote for the Tory candidates, Sir William Heathcote and Mr.

Gathorne Hardy, but lost his head, and said:--"I vote for Glad----."

Then, suddenly correcting himself, exclaimed, "I mean for 'Eathcote and 'Ardy." Thereupon Smith said, "I claim that vote for Gladstone." "But,"

said the Vice-Chancellor, "the voter did not finish your candidate's name." "That is true," said Smith, "but then he did not even begin the other two." Henry Smith kept house with an admirable and accomplished sister--the first woman, I believe, to be elected to a School Board, and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in his rooms I was introduced to the ablest man of my generation--a newly-elected Scholar of Balliol called Alfred Milner.

It is antic.i.p.ating, but only by a Term or two (for Dr. King came to Christ Church in 1873), to speak of Sunday luncheons at the house of the Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology, and of Dr. Liddon's characteristic allusion to a remarkably bloated-looking Bishop of Oxford in balloon sleeves and a wig, whose portrait adorned the Professor's house. "How singular, dear friend, to reflect that _that person_ should have been chosen, in the providential order, to connect Mr. Keble with the Apostles!"

But though the lines seem to have fallen unto me in ritualistic places, I was not without Evangelical advantages. Canon Linton, Rector of St.

Peter-le-Bailey, was a dear old gentleman, who used to entertain undergraduates at breakfasts and luncheons, and after the meal, when more secularly-minded hosts might have suggested pipes, would lead us to a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk) of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish. But to those whom he liked, and who looked up to him (for this was an essential condition), he was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. His humour, which was of a crabbed kind quite peculiar to himself, found its best vent in his sermons. I often wondered whether he realized that the extreme grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell which drew undergraduates to the Sunday evening service at St. Mary's.

For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the a.s.sistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from d.i.c.kens, we will call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so off I went at score--

"There once was at Magdalen Hall A Man who knew nothing at all; When he took his degree He was past fifty-three-- Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall."