C.S.C. and J.K.S.


Dec. 5, 1891. Cambridge Baras.

What I am about to say will, no doubt, be set down to tribal
malevolence; but I confess that if Cambridge men appeal to me less at
one time than another it is when they begin to talk about their poets.
The grievance is an old one, of course--at least as old as Mr.
Birrell's "_Obiter Dicta_": but it has been revived by the little book
of verse ("_Quo Musa Tendis_?") that I have just been reading. I laid
it down and thought of Mr. Birrell's essay on Cambridge Poets, as he
calls them: and then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the
same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and
brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very
characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in
these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is
given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team
of lightblue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University
match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue,"
and says we oughtn't to play Shelley because Shelley isn't in
residence.

Now to me this is as astonishing as if my butcher were to brag about
Kirke White. My doctor might retort with Keats; and my scrivener--if I
had one--might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would
be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative