Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars

He had

A SPICE OF CUTTING HUMOUR

In his composition, and some time after the Bishop of Durham so honourably and unsolicited presented him to the valuable living of Bishop Wearmouth, dining with his lordship in company with an aged divine, the latter observed in conversation, “that although he had been married about forty years, he had never had the slightest difference with his wife.” The prelate was pleased at so rare an instance of connubial felicity, and was about to compliment his guest thereon, when Paley, with an arch “Quid?” observed, “Don’t you think it must have been very flat, my Lord?”

A RULE OF HIS.

A writer, recording his on dits, in the New Monthly Magazine, says, in Paley’s own words, he made it a rule never to buy a book that he wanted to read but once. In more than one respect,

HE WAS UNLIKE DR. PARR.

The latter had a great admiration for the canonical dress of his order, and freely censured the practice of clergymen not generally appearing in it. When on a visit to his friend, the celebrated Mr. Roscoe, at that gentleman’s residence near Liverpool, Parr used to ride through the village in full costume, including his famous wig, to the no small amusement of the rustics, and chagrin of his companion, the present amiable and learned Thomas Roscoe, originator and editor of “The Landscape Annual,” &c. Paley wore a white wig, and a coat cut in the close court style: but could never be brought to patronise, at least in the country, that becoming part of the dress of a dignitary of the church, a cassock, which he used to call a black apron, such as the master tailors wear in Durham.

HE WAS NEVER A GOOD HORSEMAN.

“When I followed my father,” he says, “on a pony of my own, on my first journey to Cambridge, I fell off seven times. My father, on hearing a thump, would turn his head half aside, and say, ‘Take care of thy money, lad!’” This defect he never overcame: for when advanced in years, he acknowledged he was still so bad a horseman, “that if any man on horseback were to come near me when I am riding,” he would say, “I should certainly have a fall; company would take off my attention, and I have need of all I can command to manage my horse, the quietest creature that ever lived; one that, at Carlisle, used to be covered with children from the ears to the tail.”

HIS TWO OR THREE REASONS FOR EXCHANGING LIVINGS.

Meadly, his biographer, relates, that when asked why he had exchanged his living of Dalston for Stanwix? he frankly replied, “Sir, I have two or three reasons for taking Stanwix in exchange: first, it saved me double housekeeping, as Stanwix was within twenty minutes’ walk of my house in Carlisle; secondly, it was 50l. a-year more in value; and, thirdly, I began to find my stock of sermons coming over again too fast.” He was

A DISCIPLE OF IZAAK WALTON,

And carried his passion for angling so far, that when Romney took his portrait, he would be taken with a rod and line in his hand.

HIS WAY WHEN HE WANTED TO WRITE.

“When residing at Carlisle,” he says, “if I wanted to write any thing particularly well, I used to order a post-chaise, and go to a quiet comfortable inn, at Longtown, where I was safe from the trouble and bustle of a family, and there I remained until I had finished what I was about.” In this he was

A CONTRAST TO DR. GOLDSMITH,

Who, when he meditated his incomparable poem of the “Deserted Village,” went into the country, and took a lodging at a farm-house, where he remained several weeks in the enjoyment of rural ease and picturesque scenery, but could make no progress in his work. At last he came back to a lodging in Green-Arbour Court, opposite Newgate, and there, in a comparatively short time, in the heart of the metropolis, surrounded with all the antidotes to ease, he completed his task—quam nullum ultra verbum.

PALEY’S DIFFICULTIES A USEFUL LESSON TO YOUTH.

Soon after he became senior wrangler, having no immediate prospect of a fellowship, he became an assistant in a school at Greenwich, where, he says, I pleased myself with the imagination of the delightful task I was about to undertake, “teaching the young idea how to shoot.” As soon as I was seated, a little urchin came up to me and began,—“b-a-b, bab, b-l-e, ble, babble!” Nevertheless, at this time, the height of his ambition was to become the first assistant. During this period, he says, he restricted himself for some time to the mere necessaries of life, in order that he might be enabled to discharge a few debts, which he had incautiously contracted at Cambridge. “My difficulties,” he observes, “might afford a useful lesson to youth of good principles; for my privations produced a habit of economy which was of infinite service to me ever after.” At this time I wanted a waistcoat, and went into a second-hand clothes-shop. It so chanced that I bought the very same garment that Lord Clive wore when he made his triumphal entry into Calcutta.

IN HIS POVERTY HE WAS LIKE PARR.

The finances of the latter obliged him to leave Cambridge without a degree; after he had been assistant at Harrow, had a school at Stanmore, and been head master of the grammar school at Colchester, and had become head master of that of Norwich, they remained so low that once looking upon a small library, says Mr. Field, in his Life of the Doctor, “his eye was caught by the title, ‘Stephani Thesaurus Linguæ Græcæ,’ turning suddenly about, and striking violently the arm of the person whom he addressed, in a manner very unusual with him, ‘Ah! my friend, my friend,’ he exclaimed, ‘may you never be forced, as I was at Norwich, to sell that work—to me so precious—from absolute and urgent necessity!’” “At one time of my life,” he said, “I had but 14l. in the world. But then, I had good spirits, and owed no man sixpence!”

PORSON, TOO, WAS A CONTRAST TO PALEY.

The first, it is well known, vacated his fellowship, and left himself pennyless, rather than subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, from which there is no doubt he conscientiously dissented; and when asked to subscribe his belief in the notorious Shakspeare forgery of the Irelands, his reply was, “I subscribe to no articles of faith.” When Paley was solicited to sign his name to the supplication of the petitioning clergy, for relief from subscription, he has the credit of replying, he “could not afford to keep a conscience,” a saying that many have cherished to the prejudice of that great man’s memory, but which it is more than probable he said in his dry, humorous manner, without suspicion it would be remembered at all, and merely to rid himself of some importunate applicant. Paley, it is well known, notwithstanding the conclusions to which some interested writers have come, was strongly and conscientiously attached to the doctrines and constitution of the Established Church; and it was impossible but that, with his fine common-sense perception, he must have been well aware, that no Established Church, such as is that of England, could long exist as such, if not fenced round by articles of faith. And here I am reminded of an

ANECDOTE OF THE GREAT LORD BURLEIGH AND THE DISSENTERS OF HIS DAY.

He was once very much pressed by a body of Divines, says Collins, in his Life, to make some alteration in the Liturgy, upon which he desired them to go into the next room by themselves, and bring in their unanimous opinion on the disputed points. But they very soon returned without being able to agree. “Why, gentlemen,” said he, “how can you expect that I should alter my point in dispute, when you, who must be more competent to judge, from your situation, than I can possibly be, cannot agree among yourselves in what manner you would have me alter it.”

OTHER SAYINGS OF THIS GREAT MAN

Were, that he would “never truste anie man not of sounde religion; for he that is false to God, can never be true to man.”

Parents, he said, were to be blamed for “the unthrifty looseness of youth,” who made them men seven years too soon, and when they “had but children’s judgments.”

“Warre is the curse, and peace the blessinge of a countrie;” and “a realme,” he said, “gaineth more by one year’s peace, than by tenne years’ warre.”

“That nation,” he would observe, “was happye where the king would take counsell and follow it.” With such a sage minister, it is not surprising that Elizabeth was the greatest princess that ever lived, nor that she gave such wise laws to Cambridge, whose Chancellor he was.

PORSON’S PROGRESS IN KNOWLEDGE.

“When I was seventeen,” Porson once observed, “I thought I knew every thing; as soon as I was twenty-four, and had read Bentley, I found I knew nothing. Now I have challenged the great scholars of the age to find five faults to their one, in any work, ancient or modern, they decline it.” On another occasion, he described himself as

A GENTLEMAN WITHOUT SIXPENCE IN HIS POCKET.

Person declining to enter into holy orders, as the statute of his college required he should do, lost his fellowship at Trinity, after he had enjoyed it ten years; “on which heart-rending occasion,” says his friend and admirer, Dr. Kidd, “he used to observe, with his usual good humour (for nothing could depress him,) that he was a gentleman living in London without a sixpence in his pocket.” Two years afterwards his friends procured his election to the Regius Professorship of Greek, on the death of Professor Cooke, the sudden news of which event, he says, in a letter printed in Parriana, addressed to the then Master of Trinity, the learned Dr. Postlethwaite, all his ambition of that sort having been long ago laid asleep, “put me in mind of poor Jacob, who, having served seven years in hope of being rewarded with Rachel, awoke, and behold it was Leah.” He had seven years previously projected a course of lectures in Greek, which most unaccountably were not patronised by the Senate.

GREEK PROTESTANTS AT OXFORD.

Mr. Pointer says, in his Oxoniensis Academia, &c., speaking of the curiosities connected with Worcester College, there were “Ruins of a Royal Palace, built by King Henry the First, in Beaumont, near Gloucester-green, upon some parts of which ruins, the late Dr. Woodroff (when principal of Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College) built lodgings for the education of young scholars from Greece, who, after they had been here educated in the reformed religion, were to be sent back to their own country, in order to propagate the same there. And accordingly some young Grecians were brought hither, and wore their Grecian habits; but not finding suitable encouragement, this project came to nothing.”

JUDGMENT OF ERASMUS ON THE CAMBRIDGE FOLK.

Fuller says, that Erasmus thus wrote of the Cambridge folk, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. “Vulgus Cantabrigiense, inhospitales Britannos antecedit, qui cum summa rusticitate summum militiam conjunxere.” This will by no means now apply to the better class of tradespeople, and in no place that I know of is there more hospitality amongst the higher orders of society. Kirk White, in his Letters, is not very complimentary either to

BEDMAKERS OR GYPS.

The latter are called scouts in Oxford, and their office borders on what is generally understood by the word valet. The term Gyp is well applied from Γυπς, a vulture, they being, in the broadest sense of the word, addicted to prey, and not over-scrupulous at both picking and stealing, in spite of the Decalogue. I had one evening had a wine party, during the warm season of the year; we drank freely, and two of the party taking possession of my bed, I contented myself with the sofa. About six in the morning the Gyp came into the room to collect boots, &c. and either not seeing me, or fancying I slept (the wine being left on the table,) he very coolly filled himself a glass, which he lost no time in raising to his lips, but ere he had swallowed a drop, having watched his motions, I whistled (significant of recognition,) and down went the wine, glass and all, and out bolted our gyp, who actually blushed the next time he saw me. Another anecdote touching lodging-house keepers, I will head

DROPS OF BRANDY.

A certain mistress of a lodging-house, in Green-street, Cambridge, where several students had rooms, having a propensity, not for the ethereal charms of the music so called, but for the invigorating liquor itself, had a habit, with the assistance of what is called a screw-driver, but which might more aptly be termed a screw-drawer, of opening cupboard doors without resorting to the ordinary use of a key. By this means she had one day abstracted a bottle of brandy from the store of one of the students (now a barrister of some practice and standing,) with which, the better to consume it in undisturbed dignity, she retired to the temple of the goddess Cloacina. She had been missed for some time, and search was made, when she was found half seas over, as they say, with the remnant of the bottle still grasped in her hand, which she had plied so often to her mouth, that she was unable to lift her hand so high, or indeed to rise from her seditious posture. Upon this scene a caricature of the first water was sketched, and circulated by some Cambridge wag; another threw off the following Epigrammatic Conun:

Another head of a lodging-house is a notorious member of what in Cambridge is called—

THE DIRTY-SHIRT CLUB.

This is a society that has existed in the town of Cambridge for ages, whose functions consist in wearing the linen of the students who lodge in their houses after it has been cast off for the laundress. This same individual, however, had a taste for higher game, and one of the students, who had rooms in his house, being called to London for a few days, returning rather unexpectedly, actually found mine host at the head of the table, in his sitting-room, surrounded by some twenty snobs, his friends. Our gownsman very properly resented his impertinence, took him by the collar and waist, and, in the language of that fine old song, goose-a-goose-a-gander, “threw him down stairs.” The rest of the party prudently followed at this hint, leaving the table covered with the remains of sundry bottles of wine and a rich dessert. Thus the affair terminated at that time: but our gownsman being a man of fortune, and one of those accustomed, therefore, to treat his brother students, his friends, sumptuously too, went two or three days after, to his fruiterer’s, to order

DESSERT FOR TWENTY.

“The same as you had on Wednesday?” inquired the fruiterer. “On Wednesday!” he exclaimed with astonishment,—“I had no dessert on Wednesday!” “Oh, yes, sir,” was the rejoinder, “Mr. —— himself ordered it for you, and, as I before said, for twenty!” The whole matter was soon understood to be, that the lodging-house keeper had actually done him the honour to give his brother snobs, of the dirty shirt fraternity, an invite and sumptuous entertainment at his expense! Of course, he did not remain in the house of such a free-and-easy-gent. I name the fact as a recent occurrence, and

A HINT FOR GOWNSMEN.

But this is not the only way in which they are fleeced: the minor articles of grocery are easily appropriated: nay, not only easily appropriated, but a duplicate order is occasionally delivered for the benefit of the house. Some tradesmen have made

MARVELLOUS STRIDES ON THE ROAD TO WEALTH,

From various causes. I remember one man who, in six years, beginning life at the very beginning, saved enough to retire upon an independence for the rest of his life. Did he chalk double? I answer not. But students should look to these things. At St. John’s College, Cambridge, the tutors have adopted an excellent plan by which, with ordinary diligence, cheats may be detected: they oblige the tradesmen to furnish them with duplicates of their bills against the students, one of which is handed to the latter, and any error pointed out, they will be forced to rectify.

ANOTHER SPECIES OF FRAUD

Is a trick tradesmen have, in the Universities, of persuading students to get into their debt, actually pressing their wares upon them, and then, when their books show sufficient reason, forsooth, they make a mock assignment of their affairs over to their creditors, and some pettifogging attorney addresses the unlucky debtors with an intimation, that, unless the account is forthwith paid, together with the expenses of the application, further proceedings will be taken! though the wily tradesman has assured the purchaser of his articles that credit would run to any length he pleased: and so it does, and no longer. Such fellows should be marked and cut! It is but justice to add, however, that these observations do not apply to that respectable class of tradesmen, of whom the student should purchase his necessaries. The motto of every student, notwithstanding, who is desirous of not injuring his future prospects in life, by too profuse an expenditure, should be “fugies Uticam,”—keep out of debt!

THE SOURCE OF DR. PARR’S ELOQUENCE.

Some of Dr. Parr’s hearers, struck with a remarkable passage in his sermon, asked him “Whether he had read it from his book?” “Oh, no,” said he, “it was the light of nature suddenly flashing upon me.” He once called a clergyman a fool. The divine, indignant, threatened to complain to the Bishop. “Do so,” was the reply, “and my Lord Bishop will confirm you.”

To the same wit, when a student at Emanuel College, is attributed the celebrated—

ADDRESS TO HIS TEA-CHEST,

“Tu doces,” (thou tea-chest!) Others give the paternity to Lord Erskine, when a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge; n’importe, they were friends.

AS A SPICE OF THEIR JOINT VANITY,

It is related of them, that one day, sipping their wine together, the Doctor exclaimed, “Should you give me an opportunity, Erskine, I promise myself the pleasure of writing your epitaph.” “Sir,” was the reply, “it’s a temptation to commit suicide.” On another occasion more than one authority concur in the Doctor’s thus

ASSURING HIMSELF A PLACE AMONGST THE GREEK
SCHOLARS OF HIS DAY.

“Porson, sir, is the first, always the first; we all yield to him. Burney is the third. Who is the second, I leave you to guess.”

ANOTHER SPICE OF HIS VANITY

Peeped out on his one night being seated in the side gallery at the House of Commons, with the late Sir James Mackintosh, &c., where he could see and be seen by the members of the opposition, his friends. The debate was one of great importance. Fox at length rose, and as he proceeded in his address, the Doctor grew more and more animated, till at length he rose as if with the intention of speaking. He was reminded of the impropriety, and immediately sat down. After Fox had concluded, he exclaimed: “Had I followed any other profession, I might have been sitting by the side of that illustrious statesman; I should have had all his powers of argument,—all Erskine’s eloquence,—and all Hargrave’s law.” He had one day been arguing and disagreeing with a lady, who said, “Well, Dr. Parr,

I STILL MAINTAIN MY OPINION.”

“Madam,” he rejoined, “you may, if you please, retain your opinion: but you cannot maintain it.” Another lady once opposing his opinions with more pertinacity than cogency of reasoning, concluded with the observation, “You know, Doctor,

IT IS THE PRIVILEGE OF WOMEN TO TALK NONSENSE.”

“No, madam,” he replied, “it is not their privilege, but their infirmity. Ducks would walk, if they could, but nature suffers them only to waddle.”

After some persons, at a party where the Doctor made one, had expressed their regret that he had not written more, or something more worthy of his fame, a young scholar somewhat pertly called out to him, “Suppose, Dr. Parr, you and I were to write a book together!” “Young man,” exclaimed the chafed lion, “if all were to be written in that book which I do know, and which you do not know, it would be a very large book indeed.” The following are given by Field as his

REPROOFS OF IGNORANCE TALKING WITH THE
CONFIDENCE OF KNOWLEDGE.

He was once insisting on the importance of discipline, established by a wise system, and enforced with a steady hand, in schools, in colleges, in the navy, in the army; when he was somewhat suddenly and rudely taken up by a young officer who had just received his commission, and was not a little proud of his “blushing honours.” “What, sir,” said he, addressing the Doctor, “do you mean to apply that word discipline to the officers of the army? It may be well enough for the privates.” “Yes, sir, I do,” replied the Doctor, sternly: “It is discipline makes the scholar, it is discipline makes the soldier, it is discipline makes the gentleman, and the want of discipline has made you what you are.”

BEING MUCH ANNOYED

By the pert remarks of another tyro,—“Sir,” said he, “your tongue goes to work before your brain; and when your brain does work, it generates nothing but error and absurdity.” The maxim of men of experience, the Doctor might have added, is, “to think twice before they act once.” To a third person, of bold and forward but ill-supported pretensions, he said, “B——, you have read little, thought less, and know nothing.”

HE MATCHED A TRICK OF THE DEVIL.

Like the more celebrated scholars and divines, Clarke, Paley, Markland, &c., he would join an evening party at cards, always preferring the old English game of whist, and resolutely adhering to his early determination of never playing for more than a nominal stake. Being once, however, induced to break through it, and play with the late learned Bishop of Llandaff, Dr. Watson, for a shilling, which he won, after pushing it carefully to the bottom of his pocket and placing his hand upon it, with a kind of mock solemnity, he said, “There, my lord Bishop, this is a trick of the devil; but I’ll match him; so now, if you please, we will play for a penny,” and this was ever after the amount of his stake, though he was not the less ardent in pursuit of success, or less joyous on winning his rubber. Like our great moralist, Johnson, he had an aversion to punning, saying, it exposed the poverty of a language. Yet he perpetrated the following

THREE CLASSICAL PUNS:

One day reaching a book from a shelf in his library, two others came tumbling down, including a volume of Hume, upon which fell a critical work of Lambert Bos: “See what has happened,” exclaimed the Doctor, “procumbit humi bos.” At another time, too strong a current of air being let into the room where he was sitting, suffering under the effects of a slight cold, “Stop! stop!” said he, “this is too much; at present I am only par levibus ventis.” When he was solicited to subscribe to Dr. Busby’s translation of Lucretius, published at a high price, he declined doing so, by observing, at the proposed cost it would indeed be “Lucretius carus.”

HIS LAW ACT AT CAMBRIDGE.

On proceeding to the degree of LL.D. at Cambridge, in 1781, Dr. Parr delivered “in the law schools, before crowded audiences,” says Field, “two theses, of which the subject of the first was, Hæres ex delicto defuncti non tenetur; and of the second, Jus interpretandi leges privatis, perinde ac principi, constat. In the former of these, after having offered a tribute of due respect to the memory of the late Hon. Charles Yorke (the Lord Chancellor,) he strenuously opposed the doctrine of that celebrated lawyer, laid down in his book upon ‘the law of forfeiture;’ and denied the authority of those passages which were quoted from the correspondence of Cicero and Brutus; because, as he affirmed, after that learned and sagacious (Cambridge) critic, Markland (in his Remarks on the Epistles of those two Romans,) the correspondence itself is not genuine. The same liberal and enlightened views of the natural and social rights of man pervaded the latter as well as the former thesis; and in both were displayed such strength of reasoning and power of language, such accurate knowledge of historical facts and such clear comprehension of legal principles bearing on the questions, that the whole audience listened with fixed and delighted attention. The Professor of Law himself, Dr. Hallifax, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, was so struck with the uncommon excellence of these compositions, as to make it his particular request that they should be given to the public; but with which request Dr. Parr could not be persuaded to comply.

“THERE IS A PLEASANT STORY

Reported of the Doctor,” says Barker, in his Parriana, when on a visit to Dr. Farmer, at Emanuel Lodge. He had made free in discourse with some of the Fellow Commoners in the Combination-room, who, not being able to cope with him, resolved to take vengeance in their own way; they took his best wig, and thrust it into his boot: this indispensable appendage of dress was soon called for, but could nowhere be found, till the Doctor, preparing for his departure, and proceeding, to put on his boots, found one of them pre-occupied, and putting in his hand, drew forth the wig, with a loud shout—perhaps ευρηκα.” “When the late Dr. Watson,” adds the same writer, “presided in the divinity-schools, at

AN ACT KEPT BY DR. MILNER,

The reputation of whose great learning and ability caused the place to be filled with the senior and junior members of the University, one of the opponents was the late Dr. Coulthurst, and the debate was carried on with great vigour and spirit. When this opponent had gone through his arguments, the Professor rose, as usual, from his throne, and, taking off his cap, cried out—

We juniors, who happened to be present, were much pleased with the application. Soon after, being in the Doctor’s company, I mentioned how much we were entertained with the whole scene, particularly with the close: he smiled, and said, ‘It is Warburton’s,’ where I soon after found it.”

EPIGRAM

On a Cambridge beauty, daughter of an Alderman, made by the Rev. Hans De Veil, son of Sir Thomas de Veil, and a Cantab:—

NOVEL REVENGE.

Sir John Heathcote, a Cantab, and lessee of Lincoln church, being refused a renewal of the same on his own terms, by the Prebend, Dr. Cobden, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, upon accepting the Prebend’s terms, appointed his late Majesty, then Prince of Wales, to be one of the lives included in the lease, observing, “I will nominate one for whom the dog shall be obliged to pray in the daytime, wishing him dead at night.”

THEY TAKE THEM AS THEY COME.

A person might very well conclude, from the observations of the enemies of our English Universities, that the governors of them had the power of selecting the youth who are to graduate at them, or that, of necessity, all men bred at either Oxford or Cambridge ought to be alike distinguished for superior virtue and forbearance, great learning, and great talents. They forget, that they must take them as they come, like the boy in the anecdote. “So you are picking them out, my lad,” said a Cantab to a youth, scratching his head in the street. “No,” said the arch-rogue, “I takes ’em as they come.” Just so do the authorities at Oxford and Cambridge. I knew a son of Granta, and eke, too,

THE DARLING SON OF HIS MOTHER,

Whose mind, at twenty, was a chaos, and must from his birth have been, not as Locke would have supposed, a sheet of white paper, ready to receive impressions, but one smeared and useless. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not half so wise as was this scion in his mother’s opinion. She, therefore, brought him to Cambridge, and having introduced him to the amiable tutor of St. John’s College, smirkingly asked him, “If he thought her darling would be senior wrangler?” “I don’t know, madam,” was his reply, in his short quick manner of speaking, pulling up a certain portion of his dress, in the wearing of which he resembled Sir Charles Wetherell, “I don’t know, madam; that remains to be seen.” Poor fellow, he never could get a degree, nor (after having been removed from Cambridge to the Politechnique School at Paris, for a year or two) could he ever get over the Pons Asinorum (as we Cantabs term the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid.) Another

MISCALCULATING MAMMA,

And they are sure to miscalculate whenever they inter-meddle with such matters, declined entering her two sons at Cambridge in the same year, that, as she said, “They might not stand in each other’s way.” Id est, they were to be both senior wranglers. They, however, never caught sight of the goal. I recollect, on one occasion, the second son being floored in his college mathematical examination. He was said to have afterwards carried home the paper (containing twenty-two difficult geometrical and other problems,) when one of his sisters snatched it out of his hand, exclaiming, “Give it to me,” and, without the slightest hesitation (in good Cambridge phrase,) she “floored” the whole of them, to his dismay. This lady was one of a bevy of ten beauties whom their mamma compassionately brought to Cambridge to dance with the young gentlemen of the University at her parties, and after so officiating for some three or four years, notwithstanding they were all Blues, and had corresponding names, from Britannia to Boadicea, the Cantabs suffered them all to depart spinsters. But Papas also sometimes overrate their sons’ talents and virtues. A gentleman, a few years since, on

PRESENTING HIS FAVOURITE SON

To the sub-rector of a certain College in Oxford, as a new member, did so with the observation, “Sir, he is modest, diffident, and clever, and will be an example to the whole College.” “I am glad of it,” was the reply, we want such men, and I am honoured, sir, by your bringing him here.” Papa made his exit, well pleased with our Welshman’s hospitality, for of that country our Sub-Rector, as well as the gentleman in question was. The former, too, had been a chaplain in Lord Nelson’s fleet, in his younger days, and was not over orthodox in his language, when irritated, though a man with a better heart it would have puzzled the Grecian sage to have traced out by candle-light. A month had scarcely passed over, when Papa, having occasion to pass through Oxon, called on the Sub-Rector, of course, and naturally inquired, “How his son demeaned himself?” “You told me, sir,” said the Sub-Rector, in a pet, and a speech such as the quarter-deck of a man-of-war had schooled him in; “you told me, sir, that your son was modest, but d—n his modesty! you told me, sir, he was diffident, but d—n his diffidence! you told me, sir, he was clever; he’s the greatest dunce of the whole society! you told me, sir, he would prove an example to the whole college: but I tell you, sir, that he is neither modest, diffident nor clever, and in three weeks,” added the Sub-Rector, raising his voice to a becoming pitch, “he has ruined half the College by his example!” We can scarcely do better than add to this, by way of tail-piece, from that loyal Oxford scourge Terræ Filius (ed. 1726)—(to be read, “cum grano,” and some allowance for the excited character of the times in which it was written)—

ITER ACADEMICUM; OR, THE GENTLEMAN
COMMONER’S MATRICULATION.

A STORY

Is told, and, “in the days that are gone,” is not at all improbable, that a youth being brought to Oxon, after he had paid the Tutor and other the several College and University fees, was told he must subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles; “with all my heart,” said our freshman, “pray how much is it?”

FRESHMEN OFTEN AFFORD MIRTH

To both tutors, scholars, scouts, gyps, and others, by their blunders. They will not unfrequently, upon the first tingle of the college bell (though it always rings a quarter of an hour, by way of warning, on ordinary occasions, and half an hour on saints’ days, in Cambridge,) hurry off to hall or chapel, with their gowns the wrong side outwards, or, their caps reversed, walk unconsciously along with the hind part before, as I once heard a soph observe, “the peak smelling thunder.” They are also very apt to mistake characters and functionaries:—I have seen a freshman cap the college-butler, taking him for bursar at least. The persons to be so complimented are the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Proctors, the head of your college, and your tutors. When the late Bishop Mansell was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, he one day met two freshmen in Trumpington-street, who passed him unheeded. The Bishop was not a man to ’bate an iota of his due, and stopped them and asked, “If they knew he was the Vice-Chancellor?” They blushingly replied, they did not, and begged his pardon for omitting to cap him, observing they were freshmen. “How long have you been in Cambridge?” asked the witty Bishop. “Only eight days,” was the reply. “In that case I must excuse you; puppies never see till they are nine days old.”

ANOTHER FRESHMAN

Was unconsciously walking beyond the University church, on a Sunday morning, which (at both Oxford and Cambridge) he would have been expected to attend, when he was met by the Master of St. John’s College, Dr. Wood, who, by way of a mild rebuke, stopped him and asked him, “If the way he was going led to St. Mary’s Church?” “Oh, no, sir,” said he, with most lamb-like innocence, “this is the way,” pointing in the opposite direction. “Keep straight on, you can’t miss it.” The Doctor, however, having fully explained himself, preferred taking him as a guide.

WE MUST DO SOMETHING FOR THE POOR LOST YOUNG MAN.

Lords Stowel and Eldon both studied at Trinity College, Oxford, with success, and, it is well known, there laid the foundation of that fame, which, from the humble rank of the sons of a Newcastle coal-fitter, raised them to the highest legal stations and the English peerage. The former first graduated, and was elected a Fellow and Tutor of All Soul’s College (where he had the late Lord Tenterden for a pupil) and became Camden Professor. The latter afterwards graduated with a success that would have ensured him a fellowship and other University distinctions, but visiting his native place soon after he took A.B. he fell in love with Miss Surtees (the present Lady Eldon) daughter of a then rich banker, in Newcastle, who returned his affection, and they became man and wife. Her family were indignant, and refused to be reconciled to the young pair, because the lady had, as the phrase ran, “married below her station.” Mr. Scott, the father, was as much offended at the step his son had taken, which at once shut him out from the chance of a fellowship, and refused them his countenance. In this dilemma the new married pair sought the friendship of Mr. William Scott (now Lord Stowell) at Oxford. His heart, cast in a softer mould, readily forgave them,—his amiable nature would not have permitted him to do otherwise. He received them with a brotherly affection, pitied rather than condemned them, and is said to have observed to some Oxford friends, “We must do something for the poor lost young man!” What a lesson is there not read to mankind in the result! A harsher course might have led to ruin—the milder one was the stepping-stone to the woolsack and a peerage.

LIKE O’ WHISSONSET CHURCH.

A Cantab visited some friends in the neighbourhood of Whissonset, near Fakenham, Norfolk, during the life of the late rector of that parish, who was then nearly ninety, and but little capable of attending to his duty, but having married a young wife, she would not allow him a curate, but every Sunday drove him from Fakenham to the church. In short he was hen-pecked. His clerk kept the village public-house, and was not over-attentive to his duties. Our Cantab accompanied his friends to church at the usual time, arriving at which they found doors close; neither “Vicar or Moses” had arrived, nor did they appear till half an hour after. Under these circumstances our Cantab threw off the following epigram: