424 Oxford; a Poem. \_ APRIL, 



" Superbly new, which mental arts pervade, 

 And glowing pages." 



Having satisfied his curiosity, the Novice goes home to moralize ; in 

 the course of which operation, we discover that he is no less a personage 

 than Mr. Robert Montgomery ! Yes, it is the poet himself, and no other, 

 whose virgin gown flutters whose robe and cap look shy- whose pedes- 

 trian progress through Oxford is enlivened by fancied giggles and who, 

 during his meditations, 



" Rides on wings, while others walk the ground !" 



To heighten the public interest in his favour, our young poet alias the 

 Novice contrasts himself with . 



" The booby offspring of a booby sire ;" 

 and earnestly requests Heaven to save him from those 

 " Human nothings, made of strut and swell," 



who think no university is worthy of them. Having closed his descrip- 

 tion of the " booby," Mr. Montgomery proceeds to the " reprobate," 

 'who, it seems, is 



" A fool by night, and more than fop by day" 



a nice distinction, which none but the gifted few can comprehend. But 

 this reprobate, is not only a fool, and more than a fop he is also 



" A withered skeleton of sin and shame ;" 



by which our young poet would seem to imply that all reprobates 

 are <e withered skeletons." This point however we doubt, inasmuch 

 as the greatest reprobate we ever knew, was a remarkably fat man, and 

 was so far from being " withered," that he was actually as plump as a 

 partridge. We now enter upon a description of the Radciiffe Library, 

 which is called, " a dark-domed grandeur," and which somewhat 

 abruptly terminates in an apostrophe to midnight : 



" The day is earth, but holy night is heaven !" 



the reason of which is, that night is gifted with " a solitude of soul," and 

 ,that Mr. Montgomery is very much attached to it. After midnight 

 . comes an account of a boat-race on the Isis, whose barks " fly glorying 

 in oary swiftness/' whence the scene shifts with pantomimic incongruity to 

 an invocation to " Life, Fame, and Glory," and then turns back again to 

 an apostrophe to the " midnight heavens," which, much to our gratifica- 

 tion, brings us to the close of the poem. 



On reconsidering what we have here written, we find that we have 

 barely done justice to "Oxford." A more absurd tissue of bombast 

 bad grammar maudlin cant brazen conceit inconsecutive reasoning 

 and downright nonsense than this poem contains usque ad nauseam, we 

 '. never yet met with. As for " Oxford," it is no more characteristic of 

 that University, than of London, Dublin, or Edinburgh. The author 

 might call it Cambridge, with quite as much propriety. Still less does it 

 breathe any of that classic spirit which might naturally be anticipated 

 from its title. The Christmas bell-man would write equally well on the 

 subject, and with a thousand times more simplicity. Mr. Montgomery 



