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Pen's bookcases, and have it before me this minute, bound up in a collection of old Oxbridge tracts, university statutes, prize-poems by successful and unsuccessful candidates, declamations recited in the college chapel, speeches delivered at the Union Debating Society, and inscribed by Arthur with his name and college, Pendennis Boniface; or presented to him by his affectionate friend Thompson or Jackson, the author.
We mentioned above that Wilson carried off the Newdigate prize for the best poem, in 1806. His subject was, "Painting, Poetry, and Architecture." He professed, in general, to put a very low estimate on college prize-poems, and rated his own so low that he would not allow it to be published with his subsequent poems.
More than one of Wrangham's prize-poems are excellent; Richard's 'Aboriginal Brutus' is a powerful and picturesque performance; Chinnery's 'Dying Gladiator' magnificent; and Milman's 'Apollo Belvedere' splendid, beautiful, and majestic. "North. Macaulay and Praed have written very good prize-poems. These two young gentlemen ought to make a figure in the world."
Vivian Grey's English verses and Vivian Grey's English themes were the subject of universal commendation. Some young lads made copies of these productions, to enrich, at the Christmas holidays, their sisters' albums; while the whole school were scribbling embryo prize-poems, epics of twenty lines on "the Ruins of Paestum" and "the Temple of Minerva;" "Agrigentum," and "the Cascade of Terni."
But in the "Noctes Ambrosianae" for October, 1825, he was not above saying a good word in favor of these much-berated effusions, as follows: "North. It is the fashion to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine! A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the Holy Land! How fine the opening! "Tickler.
What is the nature and value of that correctness, the praise of which is denied to Macbeth, to Lear, and to Othello, and given to Hoole's translations and to all the Seatonian prize-poems? We can discover no eternal rule, no rule founded in reason and in the nature of things, which Shakspeare does not observe much more strictly than Pope.
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