He
describes them as:
"Sent from the Monarch's to the Muses' Court,
Their meals were frugal and their sleeps were short;
To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn,
And froze at matins every winters morn."
The College has an interesting portrait of the great Henry, which may
be authentic; but that of the Black Prince, which adorns the college
hall, is known to have been painted from a handsome Oxford butcher's
boy, in the eighteenth century. While we condemn the lack of historic
sense in the Provost and Fellows of that day, we may at least acquit
them of any intention of pacificist irony in their choice of a model.
Queen's has had better poets than Tickell on its rolls, but, by a
curious chance, the two most eminent--Joseph Addison and William
Collins--were both tempted away from their first college by the
superior wealth and attractions of Magdalen.
The old local connections which were such a marked feature in the
statutes of founders, and which so profoundly influenced Oxford down
to the Commission of 1854, have been almost swept away at other
colleges; but at Queen's they have always been strongly maintained.
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