Notes

1] In 1880, seven mischievous undergraduates at Balliol College, Oxford, published The Masque of B-ll--l, a broadsheet of forty quatrains making light of their superiors -- the Master and selected Fellows, Scholars, and Commoners -- and themselves. The outraged authorities immediately suppressed the collection, and only a few copies survived, three of which found their way into the College Library over the years, and one into the Bodleian Library. William Tuckwell included 18 of these quatrains in his Reminiscences in 1900, but they all came out only in 1939, thanks to Walter George Hiscock, an Oxford librarian, who issued them personally then and in a second edition in 1955.
Hiscock based his later edition on the Library copies, as well as on copies by three of the original writers, H. C. Beeching, J. W. Mackail, and J. A. Hamilton, Lord Sumner, and on two partial lists, one by a fourth author, C. A. Spring-Rice, and the other by Robert Scott, a subsequent Master of the College.
Hiscock used manuscript annotations on several of these copies to attribute the forty quatrains to their supposed authors. Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919), future Dean of Norwich, wrote or co-wrote nineteen (1, 4-8, 11, 14-18, 21-22, 24, 26, 28, 36, and perhaps 40); and John William Mackail (1859-1945), future Fellow (1882-91) and Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1906-11), wrote or co-wrote fifteen (9-10, 13, 15, 18-19, 25, 31, 33-34, 37-39, and perhaps 3 and 32). Eight were authored or co-authored by the remaining five: John Andrew Hamilton, Lord Somner (2, 20, 35), Percy Ewing Matheson (1859-1946), Fellow of New College (1881-1946; 11), John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols (23, and perhaps 29-30), Lucius Frederick Smith, future Bishop Suffragan of Knaresborough (3?), and Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice (1859-1918), later knighted and made British Ambassador to the United States. Beeching and Spring-Rice published verse collections of their own, and Mackail translated the Greek Anthology and the Odyssey.
The best of these quatrains -- 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 22, 26-27, 35, and 38 among them -- skewer the arrogance and silliness of Academe at all places and times, not just their named targets in one (admittedly brilliant) Oxford College. Beeching, Hamilton, Mackail, Matheson, Nichols, Smith, and Spring-Rice did to college life what Alexander Pope did to Grub Street.

• The Balliol Rhymes. Ed. W. G. Hiscock. 2nd edn. 1939; Oxford: printed for the editor, 1955. PN 6110 C7H5 Robarts Library
• Tuckwell, William. Reminiscences of Oxford. London: Cassell, 1900. LF 509 .T9 1900 Trinity College Library

J-W-TT: Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), M.A., and Master, Balliol College (1870 to 1893); translator of Aristotle, Thucydides, and Plato, and writer of essays and sermons.

5] James Leigh Strachan Davidson (1844-1916), Fellow (1866-1907), Master (1907-16). J. W. Mackail wrote James Leigh Strachan-Davidson, Master of Balliol, a memoir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925).

8] a Dahabeeah: a Nile-River boat.

9] Thomas Kelly Cheyne (1841-1915), Fellow and Chaplain (1868-1882), Oriel professor of the interpretation of Scripture at Oxford (1885-1908), English cleric and critic, editor, and translator of the Bible.

13] Richard Lewis Nettleship (1846-1892), Fellow (1869-92), and writer on Plato.

15] gated after Hall: confined to College precincts after dinner.

17] Robert Grey Tatton, Fellow (1872-1887).

21] William Henry Forbes (1851-1914), Fellow (1873-1896), and editor of Book I of Thucidides.

25] Evelyn Abbott (1843-1901), Fellow (1874-1901), scholar of Greek and editor of Jowett's letters.

29] Andrew Cecil Bradley (1851-1935), Fellow (1874-76), Lecturer (1876-81), and critic of English poetry, Tennyson, and Shakespeare (especially his Shakespearean Tragedy).

33] Francis de Paravicini, baron, Fellow (1878-1908). His wife Frances, the baroness, authored The Early history of Balliol College (1891; information courtesy of Geoffrey Neate).

37] Arthur Lionel Smith (1850-1924), Tutor and Fellow (1879-1916), Master (1916-24), a medieval English historian.

41] Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883), Tutor and Fellow (1878-1883), and English historian. His nephew was Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), author of A Study of History.

43] GR--N: Toynbee edited Thomas Hill Green's The Witness of God, and Faith; two lay sermons (London, Longmans, 1891).

45] Archibald John Grahame, B.A. (1882).

47] Quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, "The Witch of Atlas", stanza XXXVI, lines 329-36:

A sexless thing it was, and in its growth It seemed to have developed no defect Of either sex, yet all the grace of both, -- In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked; The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth, The countenance was such as might select Some artist that his skill should never die, Of either' but their grace elect. Imaging forth such perfect purity.

49] Charles Ashworth James (died 1937), Fellow of Hertford College (1881-92), author of an 1893 report on mining royalties.

53] Percy Ewing Matheson (1859-1946), Fellow of New College (1881-1946), Roman historian, editor of Demosthenes and Epictetus Epictetus, and translator of Anton Reiser by Carl Philipp Moritz.

57] John Andrew Hamilton, later Baron Sumner (1913), Fellow of Magdalene College (1882-89).

61] Alfred John French Adams, B.A. (1881), died 1898.

65] John William Mackail (1859-1945), Fellow (1882-91), Professor of Poetry, Oxford University (1906-11), O.M. (1935), translator of the Greek Anthology and the Odyssey, critic of S. T. Coleridge and William Morris, editor of Virgil, and literary historian of Greek and Latin literature.

68] à l'écossaise: in the way of the Scots.

69] Alexander Neilson Cumming, B.A. (1882).

70] Hegel: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher.

71] Mr. Ruskin: John Ruskin (1819-1900), English essayist and reformer.

72] Cobden: Cumming won the Cobden Prize in 1880 (for an essay).

73] Francis Charles Montague (1858-1935), Fellow of Oriel College (1881), English legal and constitutional historian.

77] Henry Crawford Crichton Macleod (1857-), B.A. (1881).

81] Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice (1859-1918), author of Poems (London: Longmans, Green, 1920). See also The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice: a Record, ed. Stephen Gwynn (Boston: Houghton, 1929). British ambassador to the United States.

85] Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919), Dean of Norwich (1911), author of Lyra Sacra: a Book of Religious Verse (London: Methuen, 1895), and of editions of Milton, Tennyson, Vaughan, and other English poets.

86] Busby and Burne-Jones: Beeching had won the Busby Theological Prize (Hiscock, 15); Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98), English painter.

89] Leonard Huxley (1860-1933), B.A. (1883), the son of Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog," editor of the explorer R. F. Scott's last journals, and of letters by his father, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Carlyle, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker.

93] John Macdonald Mackay, Professor of History, University College, Liverpool (1884-1914). See A Miscellany Presented to John Macdonald Mackay, LL.D., July, 1914 (Liverpool: University Press, 1914).

95] Aphrodeety: Aphrodite, Venus.

96] "Nicholson was a friend of Mackay's, an artist, who was then living in Oxford" (Hiscock, 16).

97] George Harford Battersby.

101] Solomon Lazarus Levi (1859-1926), or (as Benjamin Jowatt urged him to sign himself) Sidney Lee, editor of The Dictionary of National Biography (1891-1901) and of Shakespeare, and literary historian of the English Renaissance. He was knighted in 1911.

105] Harold Edwin Boulton (1859-1935), Director of Burt, Boulton (timber merchants), and co-editor of Songs of the North, gathered together from the highlands and lowlands of Scotland, with A.C. Macleod; and of Our National Songs, with Arthur Somervell.
Waifs and strays: an undergraduate verse journal then in Oxford.

109] George Nathaniel Curzon (1859-1925), later Earl, M.P., Viceroy of India, Chancellor, University of Oxford, statesman (undersecretary of state for India, 1891-92, and undersecretary for foreign affairs, 1895-98), and author of books on India, Persia, and Russia. As foreign secretary in the Asquith cabinet (1919-24), Curzon presided over the Conference of Lausanne. Curzon "had written in verse that he was joined to a suppositious Mary by a seal (sigillum)" (Hiscock, 19).

113] Sir Bernard Mallet (1859-1932), Registrar-General (1909) and author of a three-volume set on British budgets.

117] George Limbrey Sclater Booth (1860-1919), later Lord Basing, and Charles Lutley Sclater Booth (-1957).

120] Behemoth: monstrous beast.

121] Clinton Edward Dawkins, civil servant, later Sir (1859-1905).

125] Lucius Frederick Moses Bottomley Smith, Bishop Suffragan of Knaresborough (1905).

126] "Bliss was the Scout on that staircase" (Hiscock, 21).

128] Archbiaconate: a play on `arch-diaconate,' the head of deacons.

129] Reginald Wynne Simpson, B.A. (1883).

133] Arthur Cuninghame Grant Duff.

135] a balm in Gilead: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" (Jer. 8.22).

137] Charles James Jessel, later a Baronet (1883).

141] James Charles Emerton Branson, I.C.S.

145] John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols, graduated 1879.

148] Bottocellis: paintings of Sando Botticelli (1444?-1510).

149] Aboul Kassem Khan Nasserul-Moulk, Sir, Premier of Persia (1911).

152] Bismillah: "In the name of Allah or God" (Arabic Muslim exclamation).

153] Guy George Repton, B.A. (1884).

155] Brummel: Beau Brummel (1778-1840), an English dandy.

157] Samuel Brearley, died 1887.

Other poems by ANONYMOUS