From
them have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of our
history, kindled the nation into a new life; from the age of Wycliffe,
through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign of
the Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have been
wholly "without the academic circle." Analysing with the same view the
lives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we find
the proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" and
if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, the
comparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activities
around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the
ancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its
resources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and
conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be
snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced for
his country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubbling
with spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, the
discipline is hard, and the restraint excessive; and that the men whom
their colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely.
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