How are Lecturers, Tutors, Tobacco and Pewters,
and how is my friend, the Complainer?
Are the pupils of Merton, and students of Girton,
increasing in numbers, or fewer?
Are they pretty, or plain? Humble-minded or
vain? Are they paler, or pinker, or bluer?
How's the party of stormers, our so-called
Reformers? Are Moral and Natural Sciences
Improving men's Minds? Who the money now
finds, for Museums, and all their appliances?
Is Philosophy thriving, or sound sense reviving?
Is high-table talk metaphysic?
Will dark blue or light have the best of the
fight, at Putney and Mortlake and Chiswick?
I often importune the favour of Fortune, that no
misadventure may cross us,
And Rhodes once again on the watery plain,
may prove an aquatic Colossus.
[N.B. since I wrote I must add a short note,
by means of new fangled devices,