Sin,—A friend, having written at my request to ask a
relation of Mr. Bartlett for a correct version of his lines about the "port" and the "porter," received an answer last Sunday. The version which it gives is very like mine; it makes no mention of " Short " as the undergraduate's name, and consequently it has no pun on that name. The pun certainly gives greater point to the epigram; but is it on that account more likely to be genuine ? We all know the un- gracious rule that "of two readings you should choose the worse," or at any rate that the more plausible and obvious reading (lectio facilior) should be avoided. On that principle, is it not more likely that the less ingenious form of the epigram should have been afterwards improved into the more ingenious form than that the more ingenious form should have been docked of one of its salient features, so to say, even as depicted by a relation of the epigrammatist ? May not the rhyme of " port " with the surname " Short " have been suggested by an Oxford parody ? In a prize poem by Burgon there is a couplet which, as reported to me, runs thus :—
" Where can be found, save in an Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as Time ? "
Hence sprang the parody :— "Where can be found, save in some College port, A blood-red liquor half as old as Short?"
The reference is to a former patriarch of Oxford, commonly known as "Tommy Short," whose virtues were certainly not those of an ascetic.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
d'Angleterre, Biarritz.
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