CHURCHILL THE POET.
Mr. Tooke, in the biographical notice prefixed to the new edition, says that Churchill was educated at Westminster school, and at the age of fifteen—
"Became a candidate for admission [on the foundation], and went in head of the election.... At the age of eighteen he stood for a fellowship at Merton College ... when being opposed by candidates of superior age, he was not chosen.... He quitted Westminster school; and there is a story current, that about this period he incurred a repulse at Oxford on account of alleged deficiency in the classics, which is obviously incorrect, as there is no such examination or matriculation in our Universities as could lead to his rejection. In point of fact, long before he was nineteen, he was admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is equally certain that he met with some slight or indignity at Cambridge, from whence he returned immediately after his admission, disgusted at the treatment he experienced, which he afterwards visited on both universities."
There is an obvious confusion here which perhaps I can clear up.
I need not say, to those who know anything of Westminster, and of the old system of examination at our Universities, that a youth who entered college, as it is called, head of an election was qualified, at the time, not merely to have entered the University, but to have taken a degree, had age and circumstances permitted; and this opinion is confirmed in Churchill's case, by his standing for a fellowship at Merton when only in his "second election"—second year on the foundation—at Westminster. How to reconcile this with the stories current is the apparent difficulty, and yet a few words will, I think, make it all clear. There is what is called an "election" every year, from the senior boys on the foundation at Westminster, to scholarships at Christchurch, Oxford, and Trinity, Cambridge. As the scholarships at Oxford are understood to be worth three or four times as much as those at Cambridge, all are anxious to obtain an Oxford scholarship. The election is professedly made after examination; but while I knew anything of the school it was selection according to interest, and it must have been rare scholarship indeed that obtained the reward against private interest. Herein, I take it, was the repulse Churchill met with, not at Oxford, but as a candidate for Oxford. I have little doubt that with all his merit, proved by the prior election into college, he was put off with a Trinity scholarship; and it was not, probably, until he arrived at Cambridge that he clearly understood its exact no-value. He then saw that it was impossible to maintain himself there for three years—he had already imprudently married, and therefore resolved to struggle for himself, and rely on his father's interest to get ordained, and at the proper age he succeeded in getting ordained.
C. P.