[A] Note, Oct. 21, 1893.—The nuisance revived again when Mr. Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the friend of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly gone to his grave before a dispute arose, not only concerning his parentage (about which any man might have certified himself at the smallest expense of time and trouble), but over an unusually pointless epigram that was made at Cambridge many years ago, and neither on him, nor on his father, but on an entirely different Jowett, Semper ego auditor tantum?—
If a funny "Cantab" write a dozen funny rhymes,
Need a dozen "Cantabs" write about it to the Times?
Need they write, at any rate, a generation after,
Stating cause and date of joke and reasons for their laughter?
THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET
June 24, 1893. March 4, 1804. In what respect Remarkable.
What seems to me chiefly remarkable in the popular conception of a Poet is its unlikeness to the truth. Misconception in this case has been flattered, I fear, by the poets themselves:—
"The poet in a golden Clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill;
He saw thro' his own soul.
The marvel of the Everlasting Will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay...."
I should be sorry to vex any poet's mind with my shallow wit; but this passage always reminds me of the delusions of the respectable Glendower:—
"At my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak'd like a coward."