Everett
smilingly took his place in red gown among the Doctors, the Vice-
Chancellor asserting afterwards, what was true in the letter though
not in the spirit, that he did not hear the non-placets. So while
Everett was obnoxious to the Puseyites, Jelf was obnoxious to the
undergraduates; the cannonade of the angry youngsters drowned the
odium of the theological malcontents; in the words of Bombastes:
"Another lion gave another roar,
And the first lion thought the last a bore."
The popularity of "Eothen" is a paradox: it fascinates by
violating all the rules which convention assigns to viatic
narrative. It traverses the most affecting regions of the world,
and describes no one of them: the Troad--and we get only his
childish raptures over Pope's "Homer's Iliad"; Stamboul--and he
recounts the murderous services rendered by the Golden Horn to the
Assassin whose serail, palace, council chamber, it washes; Cairo--
but the Plague shuts out all other thoughts; Jerusalem--but
Pilgrims have vulgarized the Holy Sepulchre into a Bartholomew
Fair. He gives us everywhere, not history, antiquities, geography,
description, statistics, but only Kinglake, only his own
sensations, thoughts, experiences.
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