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
deserved success. This was _The Oxford Spectator_, a most humorous
little periodical, in shape and size like Addison's famous journal. The
authors were Mr. Reginald Copleston, now Bishop of Colombo, Mr. Humphry
Ward, and Mr. Nolan, a great athlete, who died early. There have been
good periodicals since; many amusing things occur in the _Echoes from the
Oxford Magazine_, but the _Spectator_ was the flower of academic
journals. "When I look back to my own experience," says the _Spectator_,
"I find one scene, of all Oxford, most deeply engraved upon 'the mindful
tablets of my soul.' And yet not a scene, but a fairy compound of smell
and sound, and sight and thought. The wonderful scent of the meadow air
just above Iffley, on a hot May evening, and the gay colours of twenty
boats along the shore, the poles all stretched out from the bank to set
the boats clear, and the sonorous cries of 'ten seconds more,' all down
from the green barge to the lasher. And yet that unrivalled moment is
only typical of all the term; the various elements of beauty and pleasure
are concentrated there."

Unfortunately, life at Oxford is not all beauty and pleasure. Things go
wrong somehow. Life dro