of the country,--to the fields in its neighbourhood. The poet
Gray thus speaks of the same university:--"Surely, it was of this
place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon, that
the prophet spoke when he said, 'The wild beasts of the deserts shall
dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and
owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" &c. &c. The
bitter recollections which Gibbon retained of Oxford, his own pen has
recorded; and the cool contempt by which Locke avenged himself on the
bigotry of the same seat of learning is even still more
memorable.[87]

In poets, such distasteful recollections of their collegiate life may
well be thought to have their origin in that antipathy to the trammels
of discipline, which is not unusually observable among the
characteristics of genius, and which might be regarded, indeed, as a
sort of instinct, implanted in it for its own preservation, if there
be any truth in the opinion that a course of learned education is
hurtful to the freshness and elasticity of the imaginative faculty. A
right reverend writer,[88] but little to be suspected of any desire to
depreciate academical studies, not only puts the question, "Whether
the usual forms of learning be not rather injurious to the true poet,
than really assisting to him?" but appears strongly disposed to answer
it in the affirmative,--giving, as an instance, in favour of this
conclusion, the classic Addison, who, "as appears," he says, "from
some original efforts in the sublime, allegorical way, had no want of
natural talents for the greater poetry,--which yet were so restrained
and disabled by his constant and superstitious study of the old
classics, that he was, in fact, but a very ordinary poet."

It was, no doubt, under some such impression of the malign influence
of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of
Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was "a place quite
incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron,
versifying a thought of his own, in the letter to Mr. Dallas just
given, declares,

"Her Helicon is duller than her Cam."

The poet Dryden, too, who, like Milton, had incurred some mark of
disgrace at Cambridge, seems to have entertained but little more
veneration for his Alma Mater; and the verses in which he has praised
Oxford at the expense of his own university[89] were, it is probable,
dictated much less by