I select this bit, famous for being one of the places in Virgil which goes to prove that the Sibylline books (to which the Augustan poets had easy access) quoted Isaiah’s prophecies of Christ and the Millennium.  It will be considered that my public versifying was quite extempore, as in fact is common with me.  For other college memories in the literary line, I may just mention certain brochures or parodies, initialed or anonymous, whereto I must now plead guilty for the first time; reflecting, amongst other topics, on Montgomery’s Oxford, St. Mary’s theology, Mr. Rickard’s “African Desert,” and Garbet’s pronounced and rather absurd aestheticism as an examiner.  Here are morsels of each in order:—­

“Who praises Oxford?—­some small buzzing thing, Some starveling songster on a tiny wing,—­ (N.B. They call the insect Bob, I know, I heard a printer’s devil call it so)—­ So fondly tells his admiration vast No one can call the chastened strains bombast, Though epitheted substantives immense Claim for each lofty sound the caret sense,” &c. &c.

Next, a bit from my Low Church onslaught on St. Mary’s in the Hampden case, being part of “The Oxford Controversy":—­

    “Though vanquished oft, in falsehood undismayed,
    Like heretics in flaming vest arrayed
    Each angry Don lifts high his injured head,
    Or ‘stands between the living and the dead.’ 
    Still from St. Mary’s pulpit echoes wide
    Primo, beware of truth, whate’er betide;
    Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steer
    Lest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer,
    Watch above all, so not Saint Thomas spake,
    Lest upon Calvin, Scylla’s rook, you break,” &c. &c.

These forgotten trivials, wherein the allusions do not now show clear, are, I know, barely excusable even thus curtly:  but I choose to save a touch or two from annihilation.  Here is another little bit; this time from a somewhat vicious parody on my rival Rickard’s prize poem:  it is fairest to produce at length first his serious conclusion to the normal fifty-liner, and then my less reverent imitation of it.  Here, then, is the end of Rickard’s poem:—­

    “Bright was the doom which snatched her favourite son,
    Nor came too soon to him whose task was done. 
    Long burned his restless spirit to explore
    That stream which eye had never tracked before,
    Whose course, ’tis said, in Western springs begun
    Flows on eternal to the rising sun! 
    Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way,
    And all save him shrunk backward in dismay,
    Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer
    To reach that stream, though doomed to perish there! 
    That prayer was heard; by Niger’s mystic flood
    One rapturous day the speechless dreamer stood,
    Fixt on that stream his glistening eyes he kept,—­
    The sun went down,—­the wayworn wanderer slept!”