upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed
over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he
seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling.
We have other great names to mention--none, I think, however, so great or
so gloomy.

Lecture The Second. Congreve And Addison

A great number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there
existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the "Union"; and I
remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who
frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the
Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating
Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of
being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of
John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping
themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at
priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau,
fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to
the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family
seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young
Cambridge men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and
carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a
young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the
dust behind the fervid wheels of the Parliamentary chariot.

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and Members of
Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were they all in the army, or
hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young
gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A
lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which
the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the
Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in
power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership,
or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an embassy, or a
clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful
fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in
_our_ time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or
empire--but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, Jo