or Shirley was allowed, without, I trust, being
often told of his mole, to proceed to his degree and to Holy Orders.

Starting off again, we find John Dryden, whose very name is a tower of
strength (were he to come to life again he would, like Mr. Brown of
Calaveras, 'clean out half the town'), at Trinity. In this poet's later
life he said he liked Oxford better. His lines on this subject are well
known:

'Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own Mother-University.
Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.'

But idle preferences of this sort are beyond the scope of my present
inquiry. After Dryden we find Garth at Peterhouse and charming Matthew
Prior at John's. Then comes the great name of Gray. Perhaps I ought not
to mention poor Christopher Smart, who was a Fellow of Pembroke; and yet
the author of _David_, under happier circumstances, might have conferred
additional poetic lustre even upon the college of Spenser. {255}

In the present century, we find Byron and his bear at Trinity, Coleridge
at Jesus, and Wordsworth at St. John's. The last-named poet was fully
alive to the honour of belonging to the same University as Milton. In
language not unworthy of Mr. Trumbull, the well-known auctioneer in
_Middlemarch_, he has recorded as follows:

'Among the band of my compeers was one
Whom chance had stationed in the very room
Honoured by Milton's name. O temperate Bard,
Be it confest that for the first time seated
Within thy innocent lodge and oratory,
One of a festive circle, I poured out
Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride
And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain
Never excited by the fumes of wine
Before that hour or since.' {256}

I know of no more amiable trait in the character of Cambridge men than
their willingness to admit having been drunk _once_.

After the great name of Wordsworth any other must seem small, but I must,
before concluding, place on record Praed, Macaulay, Kingsley, and
Calverley.

A glorious Roll-call indeed!

'Earth shows to Heaven the names by thousands told
That crown her fame.'

So may Cambridge.

Oxford leads off with one I could find it in my heart to grudge her,
beautiful as she is--Sir Philip Sidney. Why, I wonder, did he not
accompany his friend and future biographer, Fulke Greville, to Cambridge?
As Dr. Johnson once said to Boswell, 'Sir, you _may_ wonder!' Sidn