CONTENTS

PAGE
[CHAPTER I]
THE UNDERGRADUATE THEN AND NOW
Blissful ignorance—The real education—Empty schools—Manhood—Lonely freshers—The“pi” man—The newcomer’s metamorphosis—The Lownger’s day—Regrets at being down[1-8]
[CHAPTER II]
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRESHER
First arrival—Footpads and “easy pads”—Farewell to parents—A forlorn animal—TerraeFilius’s advice—Much prayers—“Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”—The disadvantages of a conscience[9-17]
[CHAPTER III]
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRESHER—(continued)
Ceremony of matriculation—Paying the swearing-broker—Colman and the Vice-Chancellor—Learningthe Oxford manner—Homunculi Togati—Academia and a mother’s love—Thejovial father—Underground dog-holes and shelving garrets—The harpy and the sheets—The first night[18-28]
[CHAPTER IV]
THE SMART
Valentine Frippery and his letter—Boiled chicken and pettitoes—Lyne’s coffee-house and thebillet doux—Tick—Liquor capacity—A Smart advises The Student—Latin odes for tradesmen only[29-38]
[CHAPTER V]
THE TOAST
Terrae Filius sums her up—Merton Wall butterflies—Hearne comments—Flavia and theorange tree—Dick, the sloven—The President under her thumb—Amhurst’s table of cons.—King Charles and the other place[39-45]
[CHAPTER VI]
THE SERVITOR
The germ of Ruskin Hall—Description of himself—George Whitefield—College exercises—Runningerrands and copying lines—Samuel Wesley—Famous servitors[46-54]
[CHAPTER VII]
SPORTS AND ATHLETICS
Rowing—Dame Hooper’s—Southey at Balliol—Cox’s six-oared crew—The river-side barmaid—Sailing-boats—Statutesagainst games—Bell-ringing—Hearne and gymnasia—Horses and badger-baiting—Cock-fights and prize-fights—Paniotti’s FencingAcademy—Old-time “bug-shooters”—Skating in Christ Church meadows—Cricket and the Bullingdon Club—Walking tours[55-68]
[CHAPTER VIII]
CLUBS AND SOCIETIES
The foregathering fresher—Dibdin and the “Lunatics”—The Constitution Club—The OxfordPoetical Club—Its rules and minutes—High Borlace—The Freecynics and Banterers[69-82]
[CHAPTER IX]
WORK AND EXAMINATIONS
Tolerated ignorance—Lax discipline—Gibbon and Magdalen—The “Vindication”—Opposingand responding—“Schemes”—Doing austens—Perjury and bribes—Receiving presents—Magdalen collections[83-94]
[CHAPTER X]
’VARSITY LITERATURE
Present-day ineptitude—Jackson’s Oxford Journal—Domestic intelligence—Election poems—Curiousadvertisements—Superabundance of St John’s editors—Terrae Filius[95-108]
[CHAPTER XI]
’VARSITY LITERATURE—(continued)
The Student—Cambridge included—Its design—The female student—Poem by Sir WalterRaleigh—Bishop Atterbury’s letter—The manly woman[109-121]
[CHAPTER XII]
’VARSITY LITERATURE—(continued)
The Oxford Magazine—Introduction of illustrations—Odd advertisements—Attention paid tothe Drama—Prologue to the Cozeners, written by Garrick—Visions, fables, and moraltales—The Loiterer—Diary of an Oxford man, 1789[122-135]
[CHAPTER XIII]
’VARSITY LITERATURE—(continued)
The Oxford PacketAcademia: or the Humours of OxfordThe Oxford ActThe OxfordSausage—Present and latter day literature summed up[136-141]
[XIV]
THE OXFORD TRADESMAN
The Student’s opinion of one—A tradesman’s poem and its result—Dodging the dun—Debtand its penalties—Tradesmen’s taste in literature—Advertising and The Loiterer—Tick—DrNewton, innkeeper—Amhurst’s confession—Fathers and trainers of toasts[142-152]
[CHAPTER XV]
THE DON
Tutors—Their slackness—The real and the ideal tutor—Dr Newton on tutors’ fees—DrJohnson’s recommendation of Bateman—Public lecturers—Terrae Filius and a Wadham man’s letter[153-162]
[CHAPTER XVI]
THE DON—(continued)
The examiners—Perjury and bribery—Method of examining—College Fellows—Election toFellowships—Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons—Heads of colleges—Their domestic andpublic character—Golgotha and Ben Numps—St John’s head pays homage to Christ Church—Drs Marlowe and Randolph[163-174]
[CHAPTER XVII]
THE DON—(continued)
Proctors—The Black Book—Personal spite and the taking of a degree—The case of Meadowcourtof Merton—Extract from Black Book—The taverner and the Proctor—IsaacWalton and the senior Proctor—Amhurst’s character sketch of a certain Proctor[175-183]
[CHAPTER XVIII]
CELEBRITIES AS OXFORD MEN
Charles James Fox—Earl of Malmesbury—William Eden—Cards and claret—Midnight oil—Oxfordfriendships remembered afterwards—Edward Gibbon—Delicate bookworm—Antagonismtowards Oxford—Becomes a Roman Catholic—Subsequent apostasy—JohnWesley—Resists taking orders—Germs of ambition—America the golden opportunity—Oxford responsible for Methodism[184-198]
[CHAPTER XIX]
CELEBRITIES AS OXFORD MEN—(continued)
William Collins—Joins the Smarts—Forgets how to work—Oxford kills his will-power—Loseshis reason—Samuel Johnson at Pembroke—A lonely freshman—Translates Pope’sMessiah—Suffers horribly from poverty—Dr Adam, his tutor—Readiness and physicalpluck—Love of showing off—His love of Pembroke[199-210]