The Mad Peter-House Poet
Gray was not the only modern poet of deserved celebrity, which Peter-House had the honour to foster in her cloisters. A late Fellow of that Society, named Kendal, “a person of a wild and deranged state of mind,” says Dyer, but, it must be confessed, with much method in his madness, during his residence in Cambridge, “occasionally poured out, extemporaneously, the most beautiful effusions,” but the paucity of the number preserved have almost left him without a name, though meriting a niche in Fame’s temple. I therefore venture to repeat the following, with his name, that his genius may live with it:—
The town have found out different ways,
To praise its different Lears:
To Barry it gives loud huzzas,
To Garrick only tears.
He afterwards added this exquisite effusion:—
A king,—aye, every inch a king,—
Such Barry doth appear;
But Garrick’s quite another thing,
He’s every inch King Lear.