Untitled - Electric Scotland

1827-33] THE OXFORD UNION 45
this question he found himself in a like minority through
out his life. But he never swerved from his first opinion,
even when he stood almost alone among his friends in
supporting it thirty-four years afterwards in the Irish
Church debates in the House of Lords. 1
His prowess as a debater is immortalised in the once
famous Uniomachia of 1833, which records in wondrous
dog-Greek, with corresponding Latin notes, an internal
conflict which threatened the very life of the Union Society.
The occasion of this epic was a debate upon the question
whether members of the Rambler Society, which had
recently been formed in the University, should be allowed
to retain their membership in the Union Society, with
which the Ramblers were supposed to be in rivalry. 2 The
Homeric character of the poem was completed by the
publication of an English
translation after the manner of
Pope. The then President of the Union was Mr. Robert
Lowe, whom the English version thus describes :-
"
In many a sable fold of honour dressed,"
The great Lowides towered above the rest ;
Before the faithful lines advancing far,
With winged words the chief provoked the war :
1 O friends, be men ! Be ours the noble boast
From Union rooms to drive a traitor host ;
Against our sovereign will they dare combine,
Form a new club, a different club from mine :-
Accursed crew, whose ruthless hands have gored
Their mother s breast with parricidal sword.
A vehement debate follows, and at last, as one of the
champions of the Ramblers,
"With thundering sound
Tait shook his tasselled cap and sprang to ground
1
See vol. ii.
p. 33.
!
Among the Ramblers were Tait, Roundel 1 Palmer, W. G. Ward,
Arthur Stanley, and Thomas Jackson, to whom is attributed the original
Greek Uniomachia^ the translations and notes being subsequently added by
other hands, among them Robert Scott, the late Dean of Rochester.
3 Mr. Lowe was already a graduate.