X. QUEM TU, MELPOMENE 177

over at once,) when I had got settled in my furrow at Christ Church, it chanced that the better men of the college had founded a musical society, under instruction of the cathedral organist, Mr. Marshall,¹ an extremely simple, good-natured, and good-humoured person, by whose encouragement I was brought to the point of trying to learn to sing “Come mai posso vivere se Rosina non m’ascolta,” and to play the two lines of prelude to the “A te o cara,”² and what notes I could manage to read of accompaniments to other songs of similarly tender purport. In which, though never even getting so far as to read with ease, I nevertheless, between my fine rhythmic ear, and true lover’s sentiment, got to understand some principles of musical art, which I shall perhaps be able to enforce with benefit on the musical public mind, even to-day, if only I can get first done with this autobiography.³

What the furrow at Christ Church was to be like, or where to lead, none of my people seem at this time to have been thinking. My mother, watching the naturalistic and methodic bent of me, was, I suppose, tranquil in the thought of my becoming another White of Selborne, or Vicar of Wakefield, victorious in Whistonian and every other controversy. My father perhaps conceived more cometic or meteoric career for me, but neither of them put the matter seriously in hand, however deeply laid up in heart: and I was allowed without remonstrance to go on measuring the blue of the sky, and watching the flight of the clouds, till I had forgotten most of the Latin I ever knew, and all the Greek, except Anacreon’s ode to the rose.

205. Some little effort was made to pull me together in 1836 by sending me to hear Mr. Dale’s lectures at King’s College, where I explained to Mr. Dale, on meeting him one day in the court of entrance, that porticoes should not be carried on the top of arches; and considered myself

¹ [William Marshall (1806-1875), organist at Christ Church, and St. John’s College, Oxford; Mus. Doc. 1840; composer and compiler.]

² [“Come mai” is from a “Canzonetta Fiorentina, with an accompaniment for the pianoforte by M. R. Lacy”; “A te o cara” is a song in Bellini’s opera I Puritani.]

³ [This, however, was not done.]

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