A TEST OF SCHOLARSHIP.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3172, 29 August 1881, Page 4

A TEST OF SCHOLARSHIP.

The late Mr Fielus possessed a remarkable memory. His knowledge of English literature was so clear and a,vailablo that ho was often called upon to settle disputed questions of authorship. Several yeare ago c gentleman, thinking to puzzle Mr Field* and make sport for a company at dinner, informed them prior to Mr Fields' arrival, that he had himself that '.'morning written some poetry and intended to submit it to Mr Fields aa Southey's, and inquire ir whioh of his poems the lines occurred. At the proper moment, therefore, after th< guests were seated, he began: ' Friend Fields, I have been a good deal exercised of late trying to find in Southey's poems hip well-known lines running thus—can you tell us about what time he wrote them ?' ' I do not remember to have met with them before,' replied Mr Fields, [ and there were only iivo periods in Southey's life when such lines could possibly have been written by him.' ' When were those ?' gleefully asked the witty questioner. ' Somewhere,' said Mr Fields, ' about that early period of his existence when he was having the measles and cutting his first teeth ; or near the close of his life, when hL brain had softened and he had fallen Into idiocy. The versification belongs to the me isle.? period, but the txpression evidently betrays the idiotio one. . The funny questioner smiled faintly ; but the company roired.