For permission to reprint these tales, which originally appeared in The Cambridge Review, The Gownsman and Chanticlere (the Jesus College Magazine), the writer thanks the editors and proprietors of those papers.
Contents
List of Illustrations
To Two Cambridge Magicians
In London lanes, uncanonized, untold
By letter’d brass or stone, apart they lie,
Dead and unreck’d of by the passer-by.
Here still they seem together, as of old,
To breathe our air, to walk our Cambridge ground,
Here still to after learners to impart
Hints of the magic that gave Faustus art
To make blind Homer sing “with ravishing sound
To his melodious harp” of Oenon, dead
For Alexander’s love; that framed the spell
Of him who, in the Friar’s “secret cell,”
Made the great marvel of the Brazen Head.
Marlowe and Greene, on you a Cambridge hand
Sprinkles these pious particles of sand.
The Everlasting Club
There is a chamber in Jesus College the existence of which is probably known to few who are now resident, and fewer still have penetrated into it or even seen its interior. It is on the right hand of the landing on the top floor of the precipitous staircase in the angle of the cloister next the Hall—a staircase which for some forgotten story connected with it is traditionally called “Cow Lane.” The padlock which secures its massive oaken door is very rarely unfastened, for the room is bare and unfurnished. Once it served as a place of deposit for superfluous kitchen ware, but even that ignominious use has passed from it, and it is now left to undisturbed solitude and darkness. For I should say that it is entirely cut off from the light of the outer day by the walling up, some time in the eighteenth century, of its single window, and such light as ever reaches it comes from the door, when rare occasion causes it to be opened.