SIB,—In "Essays and Mock-Essays," a volume consisting chiefly of contributions
to the Journal of Education, the first two lines of the epigram on Blayds, which we now know to have been written by Bartlett, are thus given :-
" 0 scholar running fast to seed,
0 freshman redolent of weed."
This is the form in which the couplet was repeated to me long ago, except that here the clauses of the two lines have, so to speak, changed partners. If my version is right, the first line ought to be, "O scholar redolent of weed." The occasion of this line I understood to be as follows. When Blayds was elected Scholar of Balliol, he had (as usual) to kneel before the Master, to be patted on the head, and to be blessed in words so sacred that they impressed me, when going through the same ordeal, with the thought that between the over-solemn and the profane the interval is but a step. When he was out of hearing, the Master (Jenkyns), whose dislike of tobacco was as strong and as outspoken as Goethe's, is said to have growled : "Even now redolent of weed !" The story may be mythical ; but I believe it to have been current when I was an undergraduate (1856-60) ; and it thus proves the early currency of this version of the line. May not the epigram have been revised by its author P I have lately heard on the authority of one of Bartlett's relations that he himself ascribed the word " squarson " to Sydney Smith. Certainly the contradictory statements which have been made or quoted in this correspondence do not Increase my faith in the value of casual evidence,—of evidence, I mean, untested by cross-examination.—I am, Sir, &c., Hi ter d'Angleterre, Biarritz. LIONEL A. TOLLEMA CH E.
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