“I sunk some pocket money in a blank book on reading Wilson’s ‘Noctes.’ Celestial nights I thought _we_ had of it, at old black Stanley’s forbidden oyster house in New Haven; and it struck me it was robbery of posterity (no less!) not to record the brilliant efflorescence of our conviviality. Regularly on reaching my chambers (or as soon after morning prayers as my head became pellucid), I attempted to reduce to dialogue the wit of our Christopher North, ‘Shepherd’ and ‘Tickler;’ but alas! it became what may be called ‘productive labor.’ Either my memory did not serve me, or wit (I shouldn’t be surprised) reads cold by repentant daylight. It was heavy work, as reluctant as a college exercise, and after using up for cigar-lighters the short-lived ‘Noctes,’ I devoted the remainder of the book to outlines of the antique (that is to say, of old shoes), my passion just then being a collection of French slippers from the prettiest feet in the known world (‘known,’ to me).” Among the uncollected “Recorder” verses is a series of three divertingly Byronic performances, “Misanthropic Hours,” from which it would seem that the poet, in his junior year, had a momentary attack of cynicism, produced by his discovery of the soullessness of “woman.” Most boys who tag lines have gone through this species of measles. “I do not hate, but I have felt Indifferent to woman long: I bow not where I once have knelt, I lisp not what I poured in song. They are too beautifully made For their tame earthliness of thought; Ay, their immortal minds degrade The meaner work His hands have wrought.” The specifications of this painful charge were several. He had been walking with a beautiful girl one glorious night, with his soul uplifted by the influences of the hour, when she rudely jarred upon his mood by remarking that “their kitchen chimney smoked again.” Another young woman, with whom he was viewing a Crucifixion in a picture gallery, had “coldly curled her lip and praised the high priest’s garment.” A third had profaned one of his religious hours. “I turned me at the slow Amen And wiped my drowning eyes, and met A trifling smile! Think ye of _men_? I tell you _man_ hath heart:--no, no, It was a woman’s smile. They tell Of her bright ruby lip, and eye That shames the Arabic gazelle; They tell of her cheek’s glowing dye, Of her arch look and witching spell: But there is not that man on earth Who at that hour had felt like mirth.” Worse than all, he had been watching by a corpse, in company with a young lady of his acquaintance, when “She trifled, ay, that _angel_ maid, She _trifled_ where the dead was laid!” These misogynistic musings called forth a remonstrance,--“Woman--to Roy,”--by one of the “Recorder’s” poetesses, who signed herself “Rob.” “Ye know her not,” she sang,