In some such way the event might most technically have been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind, Mr. Reflector, not content with this dry method of narration, cannot help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing up, this adjournment in the air sine die. It sees the benches mount,---the Chair first, and then the benches,---and first the Treasury Bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion; the Members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs and Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together, (as they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legislators, she sees the awful seat of order mounting till it becomes finally fixed a constellation, next to Cassiopeia's chair,---the wig of him that sat in it taking its place near Berenice's curls ;---all, in their degrees, glittering somewhere. Sussex misses her member * on earth, but is consoled to view him, on a starry night, siding the Great Bear. Cambridge beholds hers + next Scorpio. The gentle Castlereagh curdles in the Milky Way. St. Peter, at Heaven's wicket,--no, not St. Peter,---St. Stephen, with open arms, receives his own While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations, Reason, no less pleased, discerns the mighty benefit which so complete a renovation must produce below. Let the most determined foe to corruption, the most thorough-paced redresser of abuses, try to conceive a more absolute purification of the House than this was calculated to produce ;---why, Pride's Purge was nothing to it ;--the whole borough-mongering system would have been got rid of, fairly exploded;---with it, the senseless distinctions of party must have disappeared; faction must have vanished; corruption have expired in air. From Hundred, Tything, and Wapentake, some new Alfred would have convened, in all its purity, the primitive Wittena-gemot,---fixed upon a basis of property or population, permanent as the poles From this dream of universal restitution, Reason and Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real state of things. But, blessed be Heaven, Mr. Reflector, St. Stephen's walls are yet standing, all her seats firmly secured; nay, some have doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether gunpowder itself, or any thing short of a Committee above stairs, would be able to shake any one member from his seat ;---that great and final improvement to the Abbey, which is all that seems wanting, by removing Westminster-hall and its appendages, and letting in the view of the Thames, Thames, must not be expected in our days. Dismissing, therefore, all such speculations as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every honest Englishman, to endeavour, by means less wholesale than Guido's, to ameliorate, without extinguishing, Parliaments; to hold the lantern to the dark places of corruption; to apply the match to the rotten parts of the system only; and to wrap himself up, not in the muffling mantle of conspiracy, but in the warm, honest cloak of integrity and patriotic intention. I am, Sir, Yours, SPECULATOR. ART. XVII-Poets at College. THE ingenuity of Mr. Walter Scott has been exercised with its usual book-making diffuseness, in patching up some account of the life of Dryden, which he has prefixed to his late copious edition of the works of that illustrious poet. The masterly biographical statement of Johnson was not sufficient, it seems, to satisfy the admirers of the poet; and accordingly Mr. Scott, with an industry by no means equalled by his success, has manufactured another life to supply the deficiencies of his predecessor. We are still left in the dark with respect to some circumstances, which torment us by exciting our curiosity without gratifying it. Thus, we find, that the great poet received an education as a king's scholar at Westminster, and subsequently removed to Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his studies at the former seminary, we have frequent mention in his writings; on the latter he is almost entirely silent: Dr. Busby, his schoolmaster, is addressed with the warmest affection and gratitude, which were not extinguished to the latest period of his life; but of his college. tutors, his college studies, and college-habits, we are almost as ignorant as if he had never entered the walls of such a society. The little notice we do meet with in his writings of the Univer sity of Cambridge, is of such a nature, as not only involves us in a mysterious darkness, but excites painful feelings of regret and indignation. In a Prologue written "in his riper age" he expresses a contemptuous indifference towards it : "Oxford to him a dearer name shall be With With a view to explaining the grounds of this dissatisfaction of Dryden with his mother-university,' Mr. Walter Scott enter. tains us with a droll story of his being "put out of commons" for refractoriness to the vice-master of his college; a story, which may serve, perhaps, to console by his example other gowns. men suffering under the same affliction, but surely cannot be se riously adduced as a reason for being offended with the whole university. An attempt to clear up this part of Dryden's history, and to vindicate him from the obvious charge of ingratitude and injustice, is more interesting than easy. Yet it is certain, that if Dryden has treated his mother-university with unwarrantable ne glect, or a pointed contempt more bitter than neglect, he has, at least, been deprived, in return, of that deference which was unquestionably due to him, as one of the greatest poets that ever exalted our nation. Who would not have expected, that the name of Dryden would be joined with those of Newton, Bentley, and Porson, and handed down with them from age to age as the boast of, at least, his college, if not his university? But the Cambridge-traveller is conducted through all the departments of curiosity, and taught to admire the various monuments of science: he gazes with delight on the statue of Newton, but looks in vain for that of Dryden; and is left to conclude, either that Dryden was not a member of Trinity College, or that he conferred no honour on his college, and is consequently entitled to no posthumous distinction at its hands. Surely, such a treatment of such a man is every way disgraceful and unaccountable. But when it is considered, that Cowley, who adorned the same college, has experienced the same scanty distinction, the circumstance can be attributed solely to that rigid austerity of taste,-to that jealous exclusion of every thing poeti. cal, which seems to be the necessary result of the confined system of a college. We need not wonder to be told by Dr. Johnson, that "at the university Dryden does not appear to have been eager of poetical distinction," because we are convinced, that the manifestation of such a disposition would have been of itself almost sufficient, a century and a half ago, to exclude him from all future favour and encouragement in that university, which was at that time certainly not very poetical. But the following sentence of the great biographer is almost calculated to provoke us to laughter :— "He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the college. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess; had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain."-Life of Dryden. Dryden Dryden a fellow of a college! Who does not know that fel. lowships were bestowed on mathematics? Now, it does not ap pear from the writings of Dryden, that he had paid much atten tion to this study; nor is it in the least probable, that so loose, so gigantic, and so irregular a genius, as his, could have been at all chained down to the dry lucubrations of mathematical science. It is not among the fellows of a college, therefore, that we are to search for the name of Dryden: a fellow "should be made of sterner stuff" than poetry,-of intense study and unwearied application, of a patient forbearance from forbidden pursuits, and a humble attachment to those which are prescribed. Such being the necessary qualifications on which college ho nours are usually bestowed, it is no wonder that Dryden was excluded from them: and yet, such was the capriciousness of his temper, such was his inclination to complain of, rather than to guard against his necessities, that it is not improbable he might subsequently feel indignant at the privation of that resource from his college, for the attainment of which he had declined previously to qualify himself. If such were the case, we can only pity the great man for his fretfulness, without having much to say for the justice of it. And yet, after all, who shall venture to say, that the above. quoted rejection of all ties to his "mother-university" was not a mere momentary ebullition of ill-natured spleen and caprice, unfounded on any deep-rooted feeling, and guided by no serious wish, except to pay a compliment to a rival university, which he chanced then to be addressing? This is rendered more probable from the consideration, that "in the life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the college with gratitude." Why this gratitude was not of a more durable nature than to be shaken by the paltry prospect of a temporary interest, or whether his college had any strong claims on his gratitude, we cannot now determine: we can only regret, that so little is known of so considerable a portion of the life of such a man, and must rest contented with the dull memorial, that he went to Cambridge in 1650, and was admitted to a bachelor's degree in 1653. Whether it be, that by the frigid atmosphere of a college the faculties of a poet are frozen into inactivity, or that a college life is too retired to attract the notice of biographers, we are marvellously at a loss to conjecture what have been the occupations of some of our most illustrious countrymen, who have slept away, as it were, three dull years within the walls of a college, and never favoured the world with any account of their studies or amusements, of their thinking or playful hours, during that time. Our universities appear to be destitute of that ambition, which would delight in tracing the movements of their most cele brated brated sons,---in noticing their local habits and employments,--and in contributing some portion of information towards illustrating the lives of some of the ornaments of their country. "In' the absence of this laudable ambition, we may visit Cambridge without being able to collect any traditionary information of Dryden or of Bacon; and as to Oxford, the wits there are so ignorant of any thing relative to the college habits of their great men, that they will talk to you, with a very entertaining air of importance, of the manners and genius of Warton! All this is very petty, and one would rather hear of something new and interesting of Johnson, of Addison, and of Locke. Of Cowley, though so far removed from us, more appears to be known than of later students. He ventured to follow his poetical studies at Cambridge, and he even did it with impunity: but he was afterwards, by political influence, ejected from his "mother university," and obliged to shelter himself in Oxford; an indignity which he bore with more manliness than Dryden would have evinced, who was the greater poet, but not the greater man, of the two. Milton, says Johnson, was admitted a sizar at Christ's College, Cambridge. This is disputed by an annotator [R.], who maintains that Milton was a pensioner; for proof of which he appeals to the College Register:-" Johannes Miltonus, &c. &c. admissus est pensionarius minor." Now, if he was a pensioner, what is the signification of this minor ? An appeal should be made to some one better acquainted than myself with college terms; buť it does appear to me, that the phrase "pensionarius minor" can signify nothing else but a sizar. Be this as it may, it seems certain, that he suffered the public indignity of corporal correction" at college, and that he was either expelled or rusticated. * It is, besides, reported, that while a college student, he was discovered asleep by a lady, who left by his side a paper inscribed with the following verses of Guarini :— "Occhi, stelle mortale, The truth of this story does not rest on indisputable authority: but if it be true, it was fortunate for the lady that she did not see him awake; for his eyes were by no means so brilliant as to correspond with the beauty of his features. Gray, I believe, did not distinguish himself in any honourable way, while he was an under-graduate: it is said, that he ren dered • Dismissed into the country for a certain number of terms. |