immediate inspection.[1] At seventeen, he publishes by subscription the first four books of his epic, "Gustavus Vasa," with select translations from Homer and Klopstock. Next year he is figuring away at Trinity College, Cambridge, deep in the classics, in Byron, in reviewing for the Quarterly, and in penning vers de société, odes, epigrams, and what not. Here, too, he becomes recognised as a "Sim," as the adherents of the late Mr. Simeon are called at Grants. But notwithstanding the influence of Mr. Simeon, and eke of Mr. Wilberforce, and of other members of what Sir James Stephen styles the Clapham Sect, poor Sidney is not long in becoming a confirmed and prononcé sceptic.
Of this hereafter. Meantime, the slender narrative of his subsequent life-history claims our notice. In 1819 he took his B.A. degree—narrowly escaping plucking, from his mathematical deficiencies; although soon after vindicating his scholarship, as a ripe and good classic, by the brilliant éclat which marked his triumphant competition for a Fellowship at Trinity. That Fellowship he resigned, when compelled to "elect" between resignation and clerical ordination. While he held it, his unbusiness-like habits seem to have made it of little benefit to him, and his yearnings after married life only rendered his collegiate seclusion a kind of dignitas sine otio: deep and reverential was his sentiment towards womankind; but how to evince it, how to turn it to account, was past finding out; for his "diminutive stature—his very perceptible defects of vision—his awkward gait—his uncouth address—his eccentric manners, conveying, to those who knew him not, the impression of insanity or idiocy—his slovenly dress—his neglected person—presented to the female eye a tout ensemble, to overcome the effect of which, required an appreciation of moral and intellectual excellence rarely found, except in the highest order of female minds." And even his intellectual gifts were disadvantageously exhibited, or rather concealed; he had no conversation whatever—his gestures were awkward and uneasy—his tones hesitating and tedious. "Incapable of choosing a profession, or of engaging in any regular and systematic course of study, he frittered away and exhausted his noble powers, for years together, in employments utterly unworthy of them; in minute verbal criticism for obscure periodicals; in occasional essays, for the most part on trifling subjects; in burlesque imitations of, and parodies upon, Greek, Latin, and English authors." A tutor of his college predicted that he would live all his life a bookseller's drudge, and at last be run over and killed by a hackney-coach, while passing from one shop to another. Among his more important occupations were his superintendence of the progress of Milton's "De Culta Dei" through the University press, his editorship of Knight's "Corpus Poetarum Latinorum," and his notes on Shakspeare, still in MS., which are very copious, and for the publication of which, under the care of Mr.
- ↑ Even had young Sidney no other offensive characteristics, this was amplv sufficient to make him an object of profound disgust to the general run of school-boys. We remember how odious to our class was the very name of the English opium-eater, because our Pædagogue was constantly quoting him as one who could, ere he had nearly reached our age, translate the newspapers into Greek as he went along: it even became a source of savage regret to us that Mr. de Quincey had not gone a little farther and fared a good deal worse in his laudanum doses. It was a moot point that we should tell him as much, with our compliments, in a round robin.
