...from the *old* DNB

[Posted 3:51 PM by John Derbyshire]

Sorry, I’m a little behind, have just caught up to the January issue.

May I share my own favorite quote from the *old* DNB? It appears in the entry for Sir Francis Hastings Charles Doyle, Bart., Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the late 1860s. (And author of that stirring ode "The Private of the Buffs": "Yes, honour calls! with strength like steel/ He puts the vision by./ Let dusky Indians whine and kneel/ An English lad must die..."etc. etc.)

The old DNB reports that Sir Francis himself studied at Oxford, "where" (it adds) "his intercourse with Gladstone became very intimate."