unsel from all the clergymen
he revered, who seem all to have advised _him_ to be patient, but to have
urged his father to yield, which he finally did before the year was out;
so that Daniel Wilson was entered at St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, on the
1st of May, 1798. He struggled with the eagerness of one whose desire
had grown by meeting with obstacles. In order to acquire a good Latin
style, he translated all Cicero's letters into English, and then back
into Latin; and when he went up for his degree, he took, besides his
Latin and Greek books, the whole Hebrew Bible, but was only examined in
the Psalms. He gained a triumphant first-class, and the next year, 1803,
he carried off the English prose essay prize. The theme was "Common
Sense." He had not in the least expected to gain the prize, and had not
even mentioned the competition to his friends, so that their delight and
surprise were equal. That same year, Reginald Heber was happy in the
subject for Sir Roger Newdegate's prize for English verse, namely,
"Palestine," which in this case had fallen to a poet too real to be
crushed by the greatness of his subject.

Reginald Heber was used to society of high talent and cultivation. His
elder brother, Richard, was an elegant scholar and antiquary, and was
intimate with Mr. Marriott, of Rokeby; with Mr. Surtees, the beauty of
whose forged ballads almost makes us forgive him for having palmed them
off as genuine; and with Walter Scott, then chiefly known as "the
compiler of the 'Border Minstrelsy,'" but who a few years later
immortalized his friendship for Richard Heber by the sixth of his
introductions to "Marmion,"--the best known, as it contains the
description of the Christmas of the olden time. It concludes with the
wish--

"Adieu, dear Heber, life and health!
And store of literary wealth."

Just as Reginald was finishing his prize poem, Scott was on a tour
through England, and breakfasted at Richard Heber's rooms at Oxford, when
on the way to lionize Blenheim. The young brother's poem was brought
forward and read aloud, and Scott's opinion was anxiously looked for. It
was thoroughly favourable, "but," said Scott, "you have missed one
striking circumstance in your account of the building of the Temple, that
no tools were used in its erection."

Before the party broke up the lines had been added:

"No workman's steel, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung;
M