And was entertained in the Hall of Christ Church, "with the Latin comedy of Vertumnus, written by Dr. Matthew Gwinne, of St. John's College, Oxford, and performed by the students of that house, without borrowing a single actor; and it was upon this occasion that the _humming_ of his Majesty took place, referred to in my Preface. In 1621, when James and his court happened to be at Woodstock, the scholars of Christ Church enacted Barton Holyday's comedy of [Greek: Technogamia], or the Marriage of the Arts: but his Majesty relished it so little, as to offer several times to withdraw, and was only prevented by some of his courtiers representing that his doing so would be a cruel disappointment. This incident gave rise to the well-known epigram-- "At Christ-Church marriage, done before the king, Lest that those mates should want an offering, The king himself did offer--what, I pray? He offered twice or thrice to go away." * * * * * OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE SEEMED RIVALS At this period. Wood states, in his Annals, that when King James was entertained at Oxford, in 1605, divers Cambridge scholars went thither out of novelty, to see and hear; and some that pretended to be wits made copies of verses on that solemnity, of which, he says, I have met with one that runs-- To Oxonforde the king is gone, With all his mighty peers, That hath in grace maintained us, These four or five long years. Such a king he hath been, As the like was never seen: Knights did ride by his side, Evermore to be his guide: A thousand knights, and forty thousand knights, Knights of forty pounds a year. which some attribute to one Lake. This example, he adds, was followed by the Oxonians, when James visited Cambridge in 1614, and "many idle songs" were made by them upon the proceedings at Cambridge, the most celebrated of which is the one entitled, "A Grave Poem, as it was presented in Latin by Divines and others, before his Majesty at Cambridge, by way of Enterlude, stiled 'Liber novus de adventu Regis ad Cantabrigiam,' faithfully done into English, with some liberal advantage, made rather to be sung than red, to the tune of 'Bonny Nell,'" which poem, says Wood, may be seen in the works of the witty Bishop Corbet (by whom it was written,) "printed in 1647." But in so saying our annalist not only _lies_ under a mistake, but Mr. Gutch, his editor, has not detected it. The poem is not in the edition of 1647, but in that of 1672, which is the third, corrected and enlarged, and "printed by J. C. for _William Crooke_, at the _Green Dragoon_, without Temple Bar;" as all may see who will consult the said editions, both extant in the library of the British Museum. The poem is comprised in twenty-six stanzas, as follows:--