THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW

Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

20 November 1904

(pages 120-121)

NEWS AND NOTES.

Oxford and Cambridge, said somebody, do nothing together, but they do the same things at the same time. Some squint of Providence’s judicious eyes, or perhaps a furtive colloquy between Mr Heffer and Mr Blackwell, say at Bletchley Junction, has led to the simultaneous appearance of these two books:—‘Cambridge Poets, 1900-1913, an Anthology chosen by Aelfrida Tillyard,’ and ‘Oxford Poetry, 1910-1913,’ edited by a triumvirate of consonants. Whatever Providence and publishers may know about it, the two prefaces are blissfully or willfully ignorant of each other. The very titles are prettily diverse. ‘Oxford Poetry,’ ‘Cambridge Poets’: what is this but the old antithesis of ‘movements and men?—Cambridge individualistic as ever, Oxford

so careful of the type,

So careless of the single life

(though, as for type, the Cambridge book is the pleasanter to the eye). However, the Oxford preface assures us that the book ‘is in no sense the work of a “school” of poets,’ and that Oxford for the nonce ‘is not creating a new movement.’ Again, ‘Cambridge Poets, an Anthology’: there is no mistaking that; but the triumvirs tell us that their anthology is, ‘strictly speaking, not an anthology at all’—but just pot-luck, so to speak. Then, ‘1900-1913’ against ‘1910-1913’: subtract, and compare.

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

So far, we have just been throwing out a few hints, with all respect, to our London contemporaries, who will want to make these two books the ground of a University match.

The rule for anthologies is to read first the poems that you know, then those that are not there, thirdly the preface, and lastly, if time allows, the rest. This week time does not allow, so we suspend judgment. Meanwhile, here are prefaces by Professor Gilbert Murray and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; here is Mr Rupert Brooks on Granchester; here is Mr R. A. Knox’s ‘Absolute and Abitohell, a Satire in the Manner of Mr John Dryden upon a newly-issu’d Work entitl’d Foundations.’ Mr Knox has returned to this charge in a prose-work called ‘Some Loose Stones’—or is it ‘Tiles’?—which we have not yet read; but the present poem bids fair to be the best thing in either of our two collections. Incidentally it furnishes a motto for future Cambridge anthologies:

But we, for ev’ry one of theirs, have two,

And trust the Watchfulness of blessed Q.

As to poems that are not there, we can only speak for Cambridge. Is our Minerva unacquainted with ‘Euphrosyne,’ born in 1905? Does she not subscribe to ourselves? If she does, where are certain poems on Mike and Barts and CATS, or the jolly ‘Song of the Lecture Room’ by R.F.D., published by us in May of 1909? . . . . .

We have noticed a few surface-blemishes. ‘Euripedes,’ in a poem by a Johnian mathematician, is doubtless a studied negligence: but why is our Magdalene oxonically curtailed? Has this something to do with Mr Neuburg’s [Victor B. Neuburg] poem ‘Under Magdalen Bridge,’ whence he espies meadows damp and trim? For surely these meadows belong to Another Place. Again, one sees why Mr Aleister Crowley should have forgotten how to spell the Nevile’s Court of his old College; but he ought to be more at home on ‘Garret Hostel Bridge.’ And why has Mr G. H. S. Pinsent been annexed by King’s?

But enough, for the present. By next week we may even have to read the books.