Swinburnian prize poems, even, were attempted, without success. As yet
we had not seen Mr. Matthew Arnold's verses. I fell in love with them,
one long vacation, and never fell out of love. He is not, and cannot be,
the poet of the wide world, but his charm is all the more powerful over
those whom he attracts and subdues. He is the one Oxford poet of Oxford,
and his "Scholar Gypsy" is our "Lycidas." At this time he was Professor
of Poetry; but, alas, he lectured just at the hour when wickets were
pitched on Cowley Marsh, and I never was present at his discourses, at
his humorous prophecies of England's fate, which are coming all too true.
So many weary lectures had to be attended, could not be "cut," that we
abstained from lectures of supererogation, so to speak. For the rest
there was no "literary movement" among contemporary undergraduates. They
read for the schools, and they rowed and played cricket. We had no
poets, except the stroke of the Corpus boat, Mr. Bridges, and he
concealed his courtship of the Muse. Corpus is a small college, but Mr.
Bridges pulled its boat to the proud place of second on the river. B. N.
C. was the head boat, and even B. N. C. did Corpus bump. But the triumph
was brief. B. N. C. made changes in its crew, got a new ship, drank the
foaming grape, and bumped Corpus back. I think they went head next year,
but not that year. Thus Mr. Bridges, as Kingsley advises, was doing
noble deeds, not dreaming them, at that moment.

There existed a periodical entirely devoted to verse, but nobody knew
anybody who wrote in it. A comic journal was started; I remember the
pride with which when a freshman, I received an invitation to join its
councils as an artist. I was to do the caricatures of all things. Now,
methought, I shall meet the Oxford wits of whom I have read. But the
wits were unutterably disappointing, and the whole thing died early and
not lamented. Only one piece of academic literature obtained and