[16] I write this with full knowledge that many Oxford men deny the fact. I have rowed behind Cambridge, Oxford, and London strokes, and have several times taken the place (number 2 thwart) of a London waterman in a four (‘stroked’ by John Mackinney) training for the Thames Regatta. So that I have had ample opportunities for comparing different rowing styles; and I am satisfied that the main defect of the real Cambridge style was (and perhaps is) an exaggeration of the sound rule that a boat should be propelled rather by the body than by the arms. The very swing in a Cambridge boat shows that this must be so. On the other hand, the Thames watermen do too much arm-work; and hence seem to double a little over their oars. I once rowed with some Cambridge friends from London nearly to Oxford and back, taking a Thames waterman as ‘help.’ We set him, at first, for our strokesman, but we soon had to make him row bow, for we could none of us stand his gripping, arm-working style.
[17] The race (that of 1869) was one of the best ever rowed, and the time of the winners (Oxford) better than in any former race.
[18] This article was written early in March 1868.
[19] Another well-known instance, where ‘Patroclus, sent in hot haste for news by a man of the most fiery impatience, is button-held by Nestor, and though he has no time to sit down, yet is obliged to endure a speech of 152 lines,’ is accounted for by Gladstone in a different manner.
[20] Besides Homer’s reference, both in the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ to poetic recitations at festivals, there is the well-known invocation in Book II. To what purpose would the mere writer of poetry pray for an increase of his physical powers? Nothing could be more proper, says Gladstone, if Homer were about to recite; nothing less proper if he were engaged on a written poem.
[21] We may exclude Delphinus as probably later than Homer’s time, though mentioned by Aratus.
[22] Compare the description of the constellation Draco by Aratus:—
Swol’n is his neck—eyes charg’d with sparkling fire
His crested head illume. As if in ire
To Helice he turns his foaming jaw