My Life as an Author

amily we have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two cousins, Elisha and Carré, were at Exeter College, to take

-such as would have rejoiced the Sartor Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line, unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin poets were always

gan with blank verse and ended with rhyme, all being for the

se, enough thy

earied wing the

iles, forget t

ke, sing sweet

chords of joy

f, thy cheerf

company of ge

ons of Tempera

ant Ariels c

Innocence, and

young Hope, an

, in heaven's o

e, and Health,

ppiness with

here; and Sorr

ly flees the

ladden'd with

flies sickenin

e innate worth th

s censure equ

umble blessi

istance to h

flattery, but

sal, and a

n's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to give me the ￡25 wor

anons, and Masters of Arts. So when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of lette

sman, scholar,

ore, the Gladst

nfess to a well-known palinode (one of

ere delusive

e caustic lyric

gue whom non

erous. Some of our most honest Ministers, e.g., Althorpe and Wellington, have been

Aristotle class under the tutorship of Mr. Biscoe at Christ Church, wherein (am

egree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards attaining to great distinction, have rarely been associated at one lecture-board, either at

s the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest, hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and

ife to death his friend. We all know how admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcas

ere depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." Lord Abercorn was of the class, a future viceroy; Lord Douglas, lately Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of Baden; and if Lord Waterford was infrequent in his attendance, at least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of eccentric celebrity. Then Phillimore was there, now our Dean of the Arches; Scott and Liddell, both heads of houses, and even then conspiring together for their great Dictionary. Curzon too (lately Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine M

y recollects. Sometimes-for the lecture was a famous one-members of other colleges came in; Sidney Herbert, of Oriel, in particular, is

memorable. The lecture-room was next to Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," illustrated

) my own chambers in Fells' Buildings; that I was a class-mate and friend of the luckless Lord Conyers Osborne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his shocking death-he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attit

, Mr. Dean: be pl

is the fifth time you have not come i

ere is some mistake: for I have

me in the dark: and I request that you will do your

sir," and I left. A few days passed, and I was brought up again with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not speak

ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,-or the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I favoured with my approval (valeat quantum) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr. Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical experiments-which when Knighton and I repeated at his fat

e proved that n

etrical Probl

edict had gone out from the authorities against hunting in pink,-and next morning the Dean's and the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which nobody can explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door in a star. 3. A ce

long after of D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang fo

r that purpose; as, however, the chapel was always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,-and I then and there produced my poem on "The Dead"