Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge ScholarsGooch, Richard
History
Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars
Gooch, Richard
University of Cambridge -- Anecdotes; University of Oxford -- Anecdotes
When Gray produced his famous Ode for the installation of his patron,
the late Duke of Grafton, a production, it is observed, which would
have been more admired, had it "not been surpassed by his two
masterpieces, the Bard, and the Progress of Poetry," being possessed
of a very accurate taste for music, which he had formed on the
Italian model, he weighed every note of the composer's music, (the
learned Cambridge professor, Dr. Randall,) with the most critical
exactness, and kept the composer in attendance upon him, says Dyer, in
his Supplement, for three months. Gray was, indeed, a thorough
disciple of the Italian school of music, whilst the professor was an
ardent admirer of the sublime compositions of Handel, whose _noise_,
it is stated, Gray could not bear; but after the professor had
implicitly followed his views till he came to the chorus, Gray
exclaimed, "I have now done, and leave you to make as much noise as
you please." This fine composition is still in MS. in the hands of the
Doctor's son, Mr. Edward Randall, of the town of Cambridge.
* * * * *
THE MAD PETER-HOUSE POET.
Gray was not the only modern poet of deserved celebrity, which
Peter-House had the honour to foster in her cloisters. A late Fellow
of that Society, named _Kendal_, "a person of a wild and deranged
state of mind," says Dyer, but, it must be confessed, with much method
in his madness, during his residence in Cambridge, "occasionally
poured out, extemporaneously, the most beautiful effusions," but the
paucity of the number preserved have almost left him without a name,
though meriting a niche in Fame's temple. I therefore venture to
repeat the following, with his name, that his genius may live with
it:--
The town have found out different ways,
To praise its different Lears:
To Barry it gives loud huzzas,
To Garrick only tears.
He afterwards added this exquisite effusion:--
A king,--aye, every inch a king,--
Such Barry doth appear;
But Garrick's quite another thing,
He's every inch King Lear.
* * * * *
THE GRACE CUP OF PEMBROKE-HALL, CAMBRIDGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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