The terms in which he speaks of the university in this letter agree in spirit with many passages both in the “Hours of Idleness,” and his early Satire, and prove that, while Harrow was remembered by him with more affection, perhaps, than respect, Cambridge had not been able to inspire him with either.  This feeling of distaste to his “nursing mother” he entertained in common with some of the most illustrious names of English literature.  So great was Milton’s hatred to Cambridge, that he had even conceived, says Warton, a dislike to the face 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 admiration of the one than by a desire to spite and depreciate the other.