I now pursue my inquiry. That Chaucer was a Cambridge man cannot be proved. It is the better opinion that he was (how else should he have known anything about the Trumpington Road?), but it is only an opinion, and as no one has ever been found reckless enough to assert that he was an Oxford man, he must be content to ‘sit out’ this inquiry along with Shakspeare, Webster, Ford, Pope, Cowper, Burns, and Keats, no one of whom ever kept his terms at either University. Spenser is, of course, the glory of the Cambridge Pembroke, though were the fellowships of that college made to depend upon passing a yearly examination in the Faerie Queen, to be conducted by Dean Church, there would be wailing and lamentation within her rubicund walls. Sir Thomas Wyatt was at St. John’s, Fulke Greville Lord Brooke at Jesus, Giles and Phineas Fletcher were at King’s, Herrick was first at St. John’s, but migrated to the Hall,
where he is still reckoned very pretty reading, even by boating men. Cowley, most precocious of poets, and Suckling were at Trinity, Waller at King’s, Francis Quarles was of Christ’s. The Herbert family were divided, some going to Oxford and some to Cambridge, George, of course, falling to the lot of Cambridge. John Milton’s name alone would deify the University where he pursued his almost sacred studies. Andrew Marvell, a pleasant poet and savage satirist, was of Trinity. The author of Hudibras is frequently attributed to Cambridge, but, on being interrogated, he declined to name his college—always a suspicious circumstance.
I must not forget Richard Crashaw, of Peterhouse. Willingly would I relieve the intolerable tedium of this dry inquiry by transcribing the few lines of his now beneath my eye. But I forbear, and ‘steer right on.’
Of dramatists we find Marlowe (untimelier death than his was never any) at Corpus; Greene (I do not lay much stress on Greene) was both at St. John’s and Clare. Ben Jonson was at St. John’s, so was Nash. John Fletcher (whose claims to be considered the senior partner in his well-known firm are simply
paramount) was at Corpus. James Shirley, the author of The Maid’s Revenge and of the beautiful lyric beginning ‘The glories of our birth and state,’ in the innocence of his heart first went to St. John’s College, Oxford, from whence he was speedily sent down, for reasons which the delightful author of Athenæ Oxonienses must really be allowed to state for himself. ‘At the same time (1612) Dr. William Laud presiding at that house, he had a very great affection for Shirley, especially for the pregnant parts that were visible in him, but then, having a broad or large mole upon his left cheek, which some esteemed a deformity, that worthy doctor would often tell him that he was an unfit person to take the sacred function upon him, and should never have his consent to do so.’ Thus treated, Shirley left Oxford, that ‘home of lost causes,’ but not apparently of large moles, and came to Cambridge, and entered at St. Catharine’s Hall, where, either because the authorities were not amongst those who esteemed a broad or large mole upon the left cheek to be a deformity, or because a mole, more or less, made no sort of difference in the personal appearance of the college, or for other good and sufficient reasons, poor Shirley was
allowed, without, I trust, being often told of his mole, to proceed to his degree and to Holy Orders.
Starting off again, we find John Dryden, whose very name is a tower of strength (were he to come to life again he would, like Mr. Brown of Calaveras, ‘clean out half the town’), at Trinity. In this poet’s later life he said he liked Oxford better. His lines on this subject are well known:
‘Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own Mother-University.
Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.’
But idle preferences of this sort are beyond the scope of my present inquiry. After Dryden we find Garth at Peterhouse and charming Matthew Prior at John’s. Then comes the great name of Gray. Perhaps I ought not to mention poor Christopher Smart, who was a Fellow of Pembroke; and yet the author of David, under happier circumstances, might have conferred additional poetic lustre even upon the college of Spenser. [255]
In the present century, we find Byron and his bear at Trinity, Coleridge at Jesus, and Wordsworth at St. John’s. The last-named poet was fully alive to the honour of belonging to the same University as Milton. In language not unworthy of Mr. Trumbull, the well-known auctioneer in Middlemarch, he has recorded as follows: