Cambridge Pieces [11]
with a blue parasol over the snow; about half an hour after we met some porters carrying her luggage, and found that she was an invalid lady of Berne, who was walking over to the baths at Leukerbad for the benefit of her health--we scarcely thought there could be much occasion--leaving these two good ladies then, let us descend the Grimsel to the bottom of the glacier of the Rhone, and then ascend the Furka--a stiff pull; we got there by two o'clock, dined (Italian is spoken here again), and finally reached Hospenthal at half-past five after a very long day.
On Thursday walking down to Amstegg and taking a trap to Fluelen, we then embarked on board a steamer and had a most enjoyable ride to Lucerne, where we slept; Friday to Basle by rail, walking over the Hauenstein, {2} and getting a magnificent panorama (alas! a final one) of the Alps, and from Basle to Strasburg, where we ascended the cathedral as far as they would let us without special permission from a power they called Mary, and then by the night train to Paris, where we arrived Saturday morning at ten.
Left Paris on Sunday afternoon, slept at Dieppe; left Dieppe Monday morning, got to London at three o'clock or thereabouts, and might have reached Cambridge that night had we been so disposed; next day came safely home to dear old St. John's, cash in hand 7d.
From my window {3} in the cool of the summer twilight I look on the umbrageous chestnuts that droop into the river; Trinity library rears its stately proportions on the left; opposite is the bridge; over that, on the right, the thick dark foliage is blackening almost into sombreness as the night draws on. Immediately beneath are the arched cloisters resounding with the solitary footfall of meditative students, and suggesting grateful retirement. I say to myself then, as I sit in my open window, that for a continuance I would rather have this than any scene I have visited during the whole of our most enjoyed tour, and fetch down a Thucydides, for I must go to Shilleto at nine o'clock to-morrow.
TRANSLATION FROM AN UNPUBLISHED WORK OF HERODOTUS
This piece and the ten that follow it date from Butler's undergraduate days. They were preserved by the late Canon Joseph McCormick, who was Butler's contemporary at Cambridge and knew him well.
In a letter to THE TIMES, published 27 June, 1902, shortly after Butler's death, Canon McCormick gave some interesting details of Butler's Cambridge days. "I have in my possession," he wrote, "some of the skits with which he amused himself and some of his personal friends. Perhaps the skit professed to be a translation from Thucydides, inimitable in its way, applied to Johnians in their successes or defeats on the river, or it was the 'Prospectus of the Great Split Society,' attacking those who wished to form narrow or domineering parties in the College, or it was a very striking poem on Napoleon in St. Helena, or it was a play dealing with a visit to the Paris Exhibition, which he sent to PUNCH, and which, strange to say, the editor never inserted, or it was an examination paper set to a gyp of a most amusing and clever character." One at least of the pieces mentioned by Canon McCormick has unfortunately disappeared. Those that have survived are here published for what they are worth. There is no necessity to apologise for their faults and deficiencies, which do not, I think, obscure their value as documents illustrating the development of that gift of irony which Butler was afterwards to wield with such brilliant mastery. 'Napoleon at St. Helena' and 'The Shield of Achilles' have already appeared in THE EAGLE, December, 1902; the "Translation from Herodotus," "The Shield of Achilles," "The Two Deans II," and "On the Italian Priesthood," in THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER; the "Prospectus of the Great Split Society" and "A Skit on Examinations" in THE EAGLE, June, 1913.
And the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to each one of them they give
On Thursday walking down to Amstegg and taking a trap to Fluelen, we then embarked on board a steamer and had a most enjoyable ride to Lucerne, where we slept; Friday to Basle by rail, walking over the Hauenstein, {2} and getting a magnificent panorama (alas! a final one) of the Alps, and from Basle to Strasburg, where we ascended the cathedral as far as they would let us without special permission from a power they called Mary, and then by the night train to Paris, where we arrived Saturday morning at ten.
Left Paris on Sunday afternoon, slept at Dieppe; left Dieppe Monday morning, got to London at three o'clock or thereabouts, and might have reached Cambridge that night had we been so disposed; next day came safely home to dear old St. John's, cash in hand 7d.
From my window {3} in the cool of the summer twilight I look on the umbrageous chestnuts that droop into the river; Trinity library rears its stately proportions on the left; opposite is the bridge; over that, on the right, the thick dark foliage is blackening almost into sombreness as the night draws on. Immediately beneath are the arched cloisters resounding with the solitary footfall of meditative students, and suggesting grateful retirement. I say to myself then, as I sit in my open window, that for a continuance I would rather have this than any scene I have visited during the whole of our most enjoyed tour, and fetch down a Thucydides, for I must go to Shilleto at nine o'clock to-morrow.
TRANSLATION FROM AN UNPUBLISHED WORK OF HERODOTUS
This piece and the ten that follow it date from Butler's undergraduate days. They were preserved by the late Canon Joseph McCormick, who was Butler's contemporary at Cambridge and knew him well.
In a letter to THE TIMES, published 27 June, 1902, shortly after Butler's death, Canon McCormick gave some interesting details of Butler's Cambridge days. "I have in my possession," he wrote, "some of the skits with which he amused himself and some of his personal friends. Perhaps the skit professed to be a translation from Thucydides, inimitable in its way, applied to Johnians in their successes or defeats on the river, or it was the 'Prospectus of the Great Split Society,' attacking those who wished to form narrow or domineering parties in the College, or it was a very striking poem on Napoleon in St. Helena, or it was a play dealing with a visit to the Paris Exhibition, which he sent to PUNCH, and which, strange to say, the editor never inserted, or it was an examination paper set to a gyp of a most amusing and clever character." One at least of the pieces mentioned by Canon McCormick has unfortunately disappeared. Those that have survived are here published for what they are worth. There is no necessity to apologise for their faults and deficiencies, which do not, I think, obscure their value as documents illustrating the development of that gift of irony which Butler was afterwards to wield with such brilliant mastery. 'Napoleon at St. Helena' and 'The Shield of Achilles' have already appeared in THE EAGLE, December, 1902; the "Translation from Herodotus," "The Shield of Achilles," "The Two Deans II," and "On the Italian Priesthood," in THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER; the "Prospectus of the Great Split Society" and "A Skit on Examinations" in THE EAGLE, June, 1913.
And the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to each one of them they give