night in the midst of a wintry quadrangle, in order to astonish the college with a snow statue of the most jovial fellow of the society, with a cigar between his teeth and a bottle in each hand. Mr. Godley has sung of a more boisterous rag, “the raid the Saxon made on the Cymru men,” which was in this way:-- Mist upon the marches lay, dark the night and late, Came the bands of Saxondom, knocking at a gate,-- Mr. Jones the person was whom they came to see-- He, they said, had courteously asked them in to tea. Did they, when that college gate open wide was thrown, Go and see the gentleman, as they should have done? No: in Impropriety’s indecorous tones (Quite unmeet for tea-parties) loud they shouted “Jones!” Straightway did a multitude answer to their call-- _Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech_--Mr. Joneses all-- Loud as Lliwedd’s echoes ring all asserted, “We Never asked these roistering Saesnegs in to tea!” Like the waves of Anglesey, crashing on the coast, Came the Cymru cohorts then: countless was their host: Retribution stern and swift evermore assails Him who dares to trifle with gallant little Wales.... One who might be supposed to know said in 1899 that where a Cambridge man would know an article from the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ by heart, an Oxford man would abridge it in an epigram; and there, he contended, was a difference and a distinction. But the epigram is said to be dying. It were greatly to be regretted, if that were true, since the epigram was the handsomest medium ever chosen by inexperience for its own expression. As poetry is a criticism of life by livers, so the epigram is a criticism of life by those who have not lived. It used to be the toga of the infant prodigy at Oxford. “If only life were a dream, and I could afford hansoms!” or “A little Jowett is a dangerous thing!” used to pass muster in a crowd of epigrams. But I seemed to see the skirt of the departing epigram this year, when a young man exclaimed that he had discovered that, “After all, life is the thing,” in a discussion concerning conduct and literature: and the shock was hardly lessened by the critical repartee that the remark was “not only true but inadequate.” A few years ago smaller notions than that were not allowed to go into the world without their fashionable suit. That was the epigram. It was a verbal parallel to legerdemain. The quickness of the fancy deceived the brain: or rather the brain made it a point of courtesy to be deceived. For there was a kindly conspiracy between the speaker and the hearer in the matter of epigrams. A certain degree of skill was expected of the latter, who knew almost infallibly whether a saying was an epigram, just as he would have known a hearse or a skiff. It was the jingling bell which every one but the exceptionally clever wore in his cap, to prove that he aspired to talk. All were epigrammatists, and regarded as alien nothing epigrammatical.