Gents Mag 1850 part 2 p.463
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Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 2 p.463
list, [water-]drinker. It should be added however in justice both to the idol and the victim, that he was in time for evening chapel, "albeit long after the importunate bell had stopped." The reader, whether actually an alumnus or likely to be a visitant of Cambridge, may be glad to learn that "the evangelist St. John" was Wordsworth's patron: that his rooms were in the first of the three Gothic courts which composed the old red-brick college ere Mr. Rickman's stately corridors and supplement had crossed the Cam and rendered the New Court the cynosure of all gowns-men's eyes. Had Wordsworth been a severe student, and ambitious of mathematical distinction, he might have reasonably murmured at the garret assigned to him by the Johnian tutors. Near him was the clock of Trinity college with its qtrly momentoes of the lapse of time: beneath him were the college kitchens with their shrill-tongued manciples and "humming sound less tuneable than bees:" and hard by was the Trinity organ rolling, at morn and even, its melodious thunder over lawn and court. But of what Cambridge might in those days have taught him, there was little that Wordsworth cared to learn. The roving pupil of Hawkshead grammar-school probably brought with him to the university strong indispositions to the study of fluxions and conic sections, although in after life at least he was a profound admirer of the higher geometry. After the first novelty had worn off, Wordsworth felt what so many intellectual but non-reading men both before and after him have felt at Cambridge - the flatness and unprofitableness of University life to all not actually engaged in the strife for college prizes and fellowships. Since Wordsworth was an undergraduate, indeed, Cambridge has widened its stadium, and latterly has thrown down most of the barriers that excluded from honours all who did not combine the soul of a ready reckoner with the strength of a coach-horse. Still so much remains in the Uuniversity course either illiberal in spirit or palsying in its effects, that we trust the Royal Commission will inaugurate its inquiries into the studies of the university by pondering upon Wordsworth's experiences as narrated in his Prelude. His confessions are verified by scores of youthful and hopeful spirits in each returning year. The beginning of the race is radiant with hope: apathy arrives ere half the course is over: and the goal is - a blank. Professor Sedgwick in the last edition of his "Discourse on the Studies of the University," a work in which the comment overlays the text and the chaff buries the wheat - says indeed that Wordsworth, having declined the combat himself, was no fair judge of the system of training or the value of the prize. But if the general effect of Cambridge studies be, as we believe it to be, to deaden the imagination, to enfeeble the intellectual energies, and to create even in active and ingenuous minds a mental, if not a moral, apathy, there must be something rotten in the state of Alma Mater, which if the Commission can discover and remove, it will deserve heartier thanks than were ever paid to "captain or colonel, or knight in arms" for deliverance wrought or victory achieved. We may infer what Wordsworth about the year 1788 thought of the then actual Cambridge by the speculations in which he indulges of what a university might and ought to be:- --- Yet I, though used In magesterial liberty to rove, Culling such flowers of learning as might tempt A random choice, could shadow forth a place (If now I yield not to a flattering dream) Whose studious aspect should have bent me down To instantaneous service; should at once Have made me pay to science and to arts And to written lore, acknowledge my liege lord, A homage frankly offered up, like that Which I had paid to Nature. Toils and pains In this recess, by thoughtful fancy built, Should spread from heart to heart; and stately groves, Majestic edifices, should not want A corresponding dignity within - |
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