"Post tot naufragia tutus."--VIRG.
Thrice happy ye, through toil and dangers past,
Who rest upon that peaceful shore,
Where all your fagging is no more,
And gain the long-expected port at last.
Yours are the sweets, the ravishing delights,
To doze and snore upon your noontide beds;
No chapel-bell your peaceful sleep affrights,
No problems trouble now your empty heads.
Yet, if the heavenly muse is not mistaken,
And poets say the muse can rightly guess,
I fear, full many of you must confess
That you have barely _saved your bacon_.
Amidst th' appalling problematic war,
Where dire equations frown'd in dread array,
Ye never strove to find the arduous way,
To where proud Granta's honours shine afar.
Within that dreadful mansion have ye stood,
When _moderators_ glared with looks uncivil,
How often have ye d--d their souls, their blood,
And wished all _mathematics_ at the devil!
But ah! what terrors on that fatal day
Your souls appall'd, when, to your stupid gaze,
Appear'd the _biquadratic's_ darken'd maze,
And problems ranged in horrible array!
Hard was the task, I ween, the labour great,
To the wish'd port to find your uncouth way--
How did ye toil, and fag, and fume, and fret,
And--what the bashful muse would blush to say.
But now your painful terrors all are o'er--
Cloth'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown,
Ye strut majestically up and down,
And now ye fag, and now ye fear no more.
But although many men of this class are not gifted with that species
of perception suited to mathematical studies, however desirable it may
be that the mind should be subject to that _best of all correctives_,
the abstruse sciences, they are often possessed of what may be justly
denominated "great talents." A remarkable instance of this fact was
manifested in the person of a late fellow of Trinity (now no longer
so--"for conscience-sake,") who wrote a tragedy whilst still a boy of
sixteen or seventeen, that was produced at Covent Garden with success,
obtained the only vacant _Craven scholarship_ in his freshman's year
(always considered a high test of classical ability,) and carried off
other classical university prizes. Yet he, when he came to be examined
for his degree, though he sat and wrote out _whole books of Homer_
from memory, he was unable to go through the first problem of Euclid:
for when told that he _must_ do something _in mathematics_, he wrote
down, after a fashion, the A's and B's, but without describing the
figure, a necessary accompaniment. Of the omission he was reminded by
the examiner--"Oh! _the picture, you mean_," was his reply, and,
drawing a triangle of a true _isosceles_ cut, instead of an
_equilateral_ one, he added thereto, _a la heraldique_, by way of
supporters, two _ovals_ of equal height, which completed his only
mathematical effort. His learning and talents, however, procured him
his degree and a fellowship. To others, mathematics are an
inexhaustible source of delight, and such a mind it was that penned
_The Address to Mathematics_, in "The Cambridge Tart," beginning--
"With thee, divine Mathesis, let me live!
Effuse source of evidence and truth!"
PORSON gave a singular proof of his "fondness for Algebra," says the
_Sexagenarian_, by composing an equation in Greek, the original being
comprised in one line. When resident in college, he would frequently
amuse himself by sending to his friends scraps of Greek of a like
character, for solution. The purport of one was, "Find the value of
_nothing_." The next time he met his friend, he addressed him with,
"Well, have you succeeded in finding the _value of nothing_?" "Yes,"
replied his friend. "What is it?" "Sixpence I gave the gyp for
bringing your note," was the rejoinder.
The late Professor Vince meeting a fellow of St. John's College,
Cambridge, the next morning after a high wind had blown down several
of the fine old trees in the walks, some of three centuries' standing,
he was addressed with, "a terrible storm last night, Mr. Professor."
"Yes," he replied, "it was