SERIO-COMIC VERSE. 621 



Then your Mathematic wings, 



Plucked from off your shoulder, 

 Will express what Horace sings 



Of that rash youth, bolder 

 Than his waxen wings allowed, 



Or his cautious father. 

 Fall not thou from out thy cloud 



Algebraic, rather 



Try the Poll, for none but fools, 



Fools, I mean, at College, 

 Eeach the earth between two stools, 



Triposes of Knowledge. 

 Better in poetic rage 



Sing, through heaven soaring, 

 Than disfigure Goodwin's page 



By incessant poring. 



REPLY TO THE ABOVE, BY F. W. F. 

 " Te quoque vatem dicunt pastures" VIRGIL. 



MAXWELL, if by reason's strength 



And studying of Babbage, 

 You have transformed yourself at length 



Into a mental cabbage ; 

 And if I've proved myself a lark 



At morn and blushing even, 

 By soaring like a music-spark 



Thro' sapphire fields of Heaven, 



in which he advised me to aim at poetry like a lark, while I left mathe- 

 maticians to the distinction of being what Carlyle calls the " quickest 

 and completest of vegetables." The point of his advice was that I should 

 give up the effort to win honour in the Mathematical Tripos, and 

 should be content with the Poll, or ordinary mathematical degree, 

 reserving my strength for the Classical Tripos. I sent him my reply 

 the same day, and I remember he pressed me to let him read it at one 

 of our social meetings which I absolutely refused to allow him to do. 

 Without this word of explanation the verses would seem too nonsensical. 

 Yours very truly, F. W. FARRAR. 



