The Balliol Rhymes

In 1880, seven undergraduates at Balliol College, Oxford, published a broadsheet of 40 quatrains making fun of their masters. The college suppressed it, but a few copies survived, and librarian W.G. Hiscock published the collection in 1939: First come I. My name is Jowett. There’s no knowledge but I know it. I am Master of this College, What I don’t know isn’t knowledge. Here am I, the often sat on Dancing don; my name is Tatton; Like old wine in a new bottle Is my talk on Aristotle. I am Huxley, blond and merry, Fond of jokes and laughter, very:...

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