Cambridge Act and Tripos Verses, 1565-1894. By J. J. HALL.

Abstract

The scholastic disputation remained in use as an exercise to be performed by candidates for degrees, or as a display for eminent visitors, long after it had ceased to be taken seriously as a means of advancing knowledge. At Cambridge the exercise came to be enlivened by verses, which at least from 1565 were distributed in print or manuscript; this custom outlived the actual exercises, lasting nearly to the end of the nineteenth century, till it ceased not by abolition but from indifference. The verses, as we learn from this diligent book, were generally in the academic language, Latin; down to 1602 there was sometimes a coda in Greek, which from 1866 onwards was used for whole poems. One poem was written in Hebrew, but not recorded. The author, sometime Under-Librarian of Cambridge University Library, expresses the hope (p. 1) that his work will ‘be of interest to students of neo-Latin (and neo-ancient Greek) verse, and to those interested in the history of university ceremonies’; accordingly he presents an extensive historical introduction on the ceremonies, the degrees awarded, the lists of honours men, the theses (‘positions’) for disputation, and the verses themselves, although no literary comment is offered except on the metres used. We learn that ‘Tripos’ originally denoted the more junior (and often more frivolous) of the two performers, who sat on a three-legged stool. There follows a brief comparison with proceedings at Oxford and Dublin.