196 PRÆTERITA-I

powers of reading rightly, and with a decent gravity which I felt to be becoming on this my first occasion of public distinction, I read my essay, I have reason to believe, not ungracefully; and descended from the rostrum to receive- as I doubted not-the thanks of the gentlemen-commoners for this creditable presentment of the wisdom of that body. But poor Clara, after her first ball, receiving her cousin’s compliments in the cloak-room, was less surprised than I by my welcome from my cousins of the long-table. Not in envy, truly, but in fiery disdain, varied in expression through every form and manner of English language, from the Olympian sarcasm of Charteris to the level-delivered volley of Grimston,¹ they explained to me that I had committed grossest lèse-majesté against the order of gentlemen-commoners; that no gentleman-commoner’s essay ought ever to contain more than twelve lines, with four words in each; and that even indulging to my folly, and conceit, and want of savoir faire, the impropriety of writing an essay with any meaning in it, like vulgar students,-the thoughtlessness and audacity of writing one that would take at least a quarter of an hour to read, and then reading it all, might for this once be forgiven to such a greenhorn, but that Coventry wasn’t the word for the place I should be sent to if ever I did such a thing again.² I am happy at least in remembering that I bore my fall from the clouds without much hurt, or even too ridiculous astonishment. I at once admitted the justice of these representations, yet do not remember that I modified the

¹ [Robert Grimston (1816-1884), famous as boxer, swimmer, rider, and cricketer: mentioned below, § 236 (p. 210).]

² [The enormity of Ruskin’s offence will be understood by what Dean Kitchin tells us of the usual practice with regard to these weekly exercises: “Randall, the great hosier of the High, who afterwards retired on a good fortune, or ‘Cicero’ Cook, the learned scout of Christ Church, used to undertake, for a consideration, to compose the views of the haughty undergraduate, and the young man condescended to sign the same, and poke it into the box in the tutor’s oak. The rest usually aimed at filling their regulation three pages with few words, long and well spread out; we all came to regard the whole thing as a useless nuisance” (Ruskin in Oxford and other Papers, 1904, p. 13).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]