When I heard that the Master was to read us a paper in your beautiful Combination Room, on St John's in Wordsworth's undergraduate days, I felt sure we should hear something of historical interest and value. Nor have we been disappointed. The Master's knowledge, not only of the bygone customs of the College, but of so many of its personalities, both dons and undergraduates of that day, has been of great interest to us all.

And the second part of the programme both edified and entertained us. It is a great thing to be able to laugh at those you love, when you can do it as well as Lewis Carroll and J. K. S. The greatest Wordsworthian I ever knew well, Edward Grey of Fallodon, liked a joke about the bard. I remember his delight over Wordsworth's phrase “the solemn bleat” of a sheep. He said to me, “No one but downright old Daddy Wordsworth would ever have talked of a ‘solemn bleat’”.

It was with pride and pleasure that I received your invitation to propose this toast, on this occasion and in this place. I hope the historic rivalry of John's and Trinity will never cease. For four hundred years its fortunes have swayed to and fro, but John's never scored a bigger point (not even in the Boat Race against Oxford in 1950) than when, practically in one undergraduate generation, it produced three such men as Wilberforce, Castlereagh and Wordsworth, to say nothing of Palmerston a decade later.