CHAPTER VII.

PRIZE POEMS, ETC.

In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, “The Suttees” and the “African Desert,” won respectively by Claughton, now Bishop of St. Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought to know, but don’t.  A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine, E.H.  Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to be coached in his recital.  It was rumoured that I came second on both occasions,—­one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to me, but I know not who placed it there.  However, my pieces were afterwards printed; both separately, and among my “Ballads and Poems,” by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me.  As an impartial and veteran judge of such literaria, I am bold to say they are far better than I thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend Abney & Co. were sure they would.

At the close of my University career came, of course, the Great Go, which I had to do as I did the Little Go, all on paper; for I could not answer viva voce.  And this rule then, whatever may be the case now, prevented me from going in for honours, though I had read for a first, and hoped at least to get a second.  Neither of these, nor even a third class, was technically possible, if I could not stand a two days’ ordeal of viva voce examination, part of the whole week then exacted.  However, I did all at my best on paper, specially the translations from classic poets in verse:  whereof I’ll find a specimen anon.  The issue of all was that I was offered an honorary fourth class,—­which I refused, as not willing to appear at the bottom of the list of all, alphabetically,—­and so my tutor, Mr. Biscoe, not wishing to lose the honour for our college, managed to get it transferred to another of his pupils, Mr. Thistlethwaite, whose father wrote to thank me for this unexpected though not unmerited luck falling to his son.

One short presentable piece of verse-making in the schools is as below from Virgil:  there were also three odes of Horace, a chorus from AEschylus, and more from other Greek and Latin poets.

    “Sicilian Muses, sing we loftier strains! 
    The humble tamarisk and woodland plains
    Delight not all; if woods and groves we try,
    Be the groves worthy of a consul’s eye. 
    Told by the Sibyl’s song, the ‘latter time’
    Is come, and dispensations roll sublime
    In new and glorious order; spring again
    With Virgo comes, and Saturn’s golden reign. 
    A heavenly band from heaven’s bright realm descends,
    All evil ceases, and all discord ends. 
    Do thou with favouring eye, Lucina chaste,
    Regard the wondrous babe,—­his coming haste,—­
    For under him the iron age shall cease,
    And the vast world rejoice in golden peace,” &c. &c.