University of Virginia Library

THE PROBLEM AND THE PROFESSOR.

I never will believe, that our Professor
Who burrows so profoundly in Greek Roots
And wears a model coat and patent boots
Can have become so sudden a transgressor,
As he is widely said to be at last;
I stand aghast.
No man thrice twenty,
Nemo repente
Would ever be, could ever be turpissimus;
And he ipsissimus!
Why, it is quite a proper man, stipendiary,
And pious too and of the Church a pillar—
At least, from the outside—a tried fulfiller
Of each grave decent duty, no incendiary
Or ravisher of creeds and cults; a quiet
Old-fashioned and respectable
Good solid person, most delectable
To curates and the spinsters and the rest,
And careful in his diet.
He never bore a firebrand in his breast,
Or launched one flaming phrase
And scorched his fingers
With burning questions and some boiling phase
Of vice or Venezuela. Nay, he lingers
Over his wine and walnuts and conventions
Which social use has made its own, and sweet
With centuried wont; he has no crude intentions,
Or doctrine which might savour of the street
And gutter.
O no!
He takes his tea at five, thin bread and butter,
And goes just whither gentlemen should go
In regulation ruts; he's safe and sound,
Both wind and limb, in all the ancient articles
And all decorum's particles,
Do be convinced, and treads the common round
Of commonplace and common sense society,
And has no kick in him of impropriety.
But he to drop unseemly terms as oaths!
He were as likely, sir, without his clothes
To dance a drunken measure
And at some Moenad's pleasure
Cut capers in gymnosophy—
He who is quite three parts at least philosophy!
His character is good, and then his learning
Above suspicion;
He has no yearning
For primrose paths, that lead men to perdition
And penury and shame
With broken knees and name—
Not he! we pay him to be strait and steadfast,
And nice and dull with dignity;
He keeps his balanced head fast
Amid the storms of error and malignity
Or ponderous German jokes—the Higher Criticism,
Too vague for tears, too vast for witticism
And mouldy ere the book—he prays by proxy,
No doubt, and sends his wife to early Matins
For him and knows but nought of pyx and patins—
But who can doubt his orthodoxy?
And then there is the honour of the Chair,
So far-descended, wide-extended
And venerable and most fair,
The heritage of ages and the sages
With its historic air;
That has a whiff of Bentley's gown,
And was the chosen stair
By which the grand old scholars won renown
And climbed, by no venality,
To their Pantheon and their immortality!
This stands at stake, in peril,
If our Professor's
Sobriety has failed and flesh prevailed
To turn his studies sterile
And all unworthy of his predecessors.
O when he speaks of just the merest platitude,
He has a pretty ex cathedra attitude
And makes his minnows talk like whales;
When he regales
Our appetites with hoary jests, they catch
A reflex glory from the Chair,
A solemn and a sapient air,
And hatch
Into a new and true and monstrous miracle
Of wit, as though it were the spiracle
For awful wisdom from above. The mint,
Which is his mighty brain
Evolves without a strain
Each sentence crisp and clean and ripe for print;
He has capacity,
I can assure you, and will turn you out
Great thumping propositions by the dozen,
To glut the worst voracity,
Or solve you the enigma or the doubt
And cozen
The clearest mind into a hopeless fog.
Yet he is loyal to the Decalogue,
And never broke a law or even cracked
The lightest of the ten; he has not lacked
In reputation aught for life,
And covets not his neighbour's wife.
If he had sworn in Greek or good round Latin,
Which he is pat in,
It might have passed—a scholar's trick—no more;
And Porson swore
In pure and perfect Attic,
All know, though he was more erratic
And mingled with his verses
Such polished classic curses,
They sounded just like blessings and could shock
Nor Quaker nor a Miss in Sunday frock;
O yes, he swore so sweetly,
As ladies ply the fan
And like a gentleman—
Not indiscreetly;
The habit fitted him, a graceful vesture,
As any little private turn or gesture.
And Madame Dacier,
Correct and cool and blue as is a glacier,
Yet sometimes lilted into oaths
Which our refinement loathes,
But sanctified when decked in learned dresses
And coming out as harmless as caresses
Or innocence itself. And, what is odder,
Casaubon used to dodder
(Unless it's slanderous fiction's
Tale) into maledictions,
That would not hurt a fly or Puritan
And were but milk-sop to an artisan
Of the full-blown and healthy modern type,
Roaring all hell betwixt his glass and pipe.
Nor is there much, I warn you to prefer
In Joseph Scaliger,
Who drew a daily round of hearty rations
From bumper imprecations,
And in a decent veil of neat obscurity—
Ni fallor—left a witness for futurity.
But these were scholars,
They wore a fitting mask
And mouthed through classic collars,
Which our conventions ask,
Their dear damnations and abominations.
If the Professor too had sworn in German
Like Doctor Herman,
Who cannot say a sentence without crutches
Of awful words and ways, and seems to sputter all
His viscera up in groans and every guttural,
And what he treats on smutches
With smear-like hand; or if in French he fiddled
A naughty tune or two,
And played the sapeur or what is most torrid
Or to our hearing horrid;
The burden had been left unriddled,
And without more ado.
But now I should remember,
He told me something—O what was this! Hang it!
Which asks from me for no apology,
And got none from old “Hang-theology”—
He told me last December,
When he had ended lecture—how he did harangue it!
He was engaged on some tremendous toil,
Another Heraklean task,
On some lost letter,
Which promised him a splendid spoil
And even a Falernian cask
Or something better.
What was it? Ah, I am no scholar
With classic idioms pigeon-holed
And almost as it were religion-holed,
Each with a shrine and halo; but I'd bet a dollar,
Here is the secret or its right solution
Which would dispel at once the cloud
And give his credit handsome restitution—
If I remembered what he spoke aloud.
Ha, now I have it! Hear me, Porson's ghost,
To whom this night I vow a generous toast!
He never could have said, “I d—n her”—
He, so polite, who has been known to bow
Unto a cow—
But what he did say was, “Digamma.”