sed the hook,--
Another--safe! the monarch of the brook,
With broadside like a salmon's, gleaming brightly:
Off let him race, and waste his prowess there;
The dread of Damocles, a single hair,
Will tax my skill to take this fine old trout;
So,--lead him gently; quick, the net, the net!
Now gladly lift the glittering beauty out,
Hued like a dolphin, sweet as violet."

CHAPTER VII.

PRIZE POEMS, ETC.

In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems,
"The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton,
now Bishop of St. Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought
to know, but don't. A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine,
E.H. Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those
two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by
heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian
Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to
be coached in his recital. It was rumoured that I came second on both
occasions,--one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to
me, but I know not who placed it there. However, my pieces were
afterwards printed; both separately, and among my "Ballads and Poems,"
by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me. As an impartial and veteran
judge of such _literaria_, I am bold to say they are far better than I
thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend
Abney & Co. were sure they would.

At the close of my University career came, of course, the Great Go,
which I had to do as I did the Little Go, all on paper; for I could not
answer _viva voce_. And this rule then, whatever may be the case now,
prevented me from going in for honours, though I had read for a first,
and hoped at least to get a second. Neither of these, nor even a third
class, was technically possible, if I could not stand a two days' ordeal
of _viva voce_ examination, part of the whole week then exacted.
However, I did all at my best on paper, specially the translations from
classic poets in verse: whereof I'll find a specimen anon. The issue of
all was that I was offered an honorary fourth class,--which I refused,
as not willing to appear at the bottom of the list of all,
alphabetically,--and so my tutor, Mr. Biscoe, not wishing to lose the
honour for our college, managed to get it transferred to another of his
p