The Masque of B-ll--l

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. Back to Line

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). Back to Line

8] a Dahabeeah: a Nile-River boat. Back to Line

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. Back to Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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). Back to Line

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

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. Back to Line

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

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

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.

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

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. Back to Line

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

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

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. Back to Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Back to Line

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. Back to Line

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

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. Back to Line

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). Back to Line

95] Aphrodeety: Aphrodite, Venus. Back to Line

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

97] George Harford Battersby. Back to Line

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. Back to Line

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. Back to Line

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). Back to Line

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

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

120] Behemoth: monstrous beast. Back to Line

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

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

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

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

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

133] Arthur Cuninghame Grant Duff. Back to Line

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

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

141] James Charles Emerton Branson, I.C.S. Back to Line

145] John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols, graduated 1879. Back to Line

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

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

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

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

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

157] Samuel Brearley, died 1887. Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1881

Publication Notes

The Masque of B-ll--l (1881). Balliol Library; Bodleian Library.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2001

Rhyme

aabb

Form

quatrains