It is well to remember White and Johnson when the Gibbon
of that or any other day bewails the intellectual poverty of Oxford.
CHAPTER VIII--POETS AT OXFORD: SHELLEY AND LANDOR
At any given time a large number of poets may be found among the
undergraduates at Oxford, and the younger dons. It is not easy to
say what becomes of all these pious bards, who are a marked and
peculiar people while they remain in residence. The undergraduate
poet is a not uninteresting study. He wears his hair long, and
divides it down the middle. His eye is wild and wandering, and his
manner absent, especially when he is called on to translate a piece
of an ancient author in lecture. He does not "read" much, in the
technical sense of the term, but consumes all the novels that come in
his way, and all the minor poetry. His own verses the poet may be
heard declaiming aloud, at unholy midnight hours, so that his
neighbours have been known to break his windows with bottles, and
then to throw in all that remained of the cold meats of a supper
party, without interfering with the divine afflatus. When the
college poet has composed a sonnet, ode, or what not, he sends it to
the Editor of the Nineteenth Century, and it returns to him after
many days. At last it appears in print, in College Rhymes, a
collection of mild verse, which is (or was) printed at regular or
irregular intervals, and was never seen except in the rooms of
contributors.
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