TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, IN PARLIAMENT.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—On the ground that Cambridge has produced some prominent politicians, whom he names, your correspondent " Trin. Coll. Cam." in the Spectator of December 27th, 1902, expresses amusement at the statement in a popular periodical that Cambridge has been more distinguished for her poets than for her statesmen. It is difficult, no doubt, to find a common denominator for the two kinds of distinction; but I find it hard to believe that Cambridge is quite so proud even of Mr. Balfour and the Duke of Devonshire as of Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Tennyson. As a matter of fact, the remark did not take the negative form which "Trim Coll. Cam." gives to it; and the sting, if there was any, lay elsewhere than in the tail. It is, I imagine, a commonplace that " Oxford has been the statesmen's—as Cambridge has been the poets'—University ";
and most people would, I think, regard the latter distinction as the higber.—I am,'Sir, &c.,
THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.
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