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A View of the Theatre, Printing House &c. &c. at Oxford.

The lad then went out into the town with this same “sociable priest,” bought his gown, and parted from his parents, and then—

“The master said they might believe him,
So righteously (the Lord forgive him!)
he’d govern
He’d show me the extremest love,
Provided that I did not prove
too stubborn.
So far, so good—but now fresh fees
Began (for so the custom is)
Fresh fees!—with drink they knock you down,
You spoil your clothes; and your new gown
you spue in....”

He then retired for the night, and was awakened at six o’clock next morning by a “scoundrel” of a servitor. He rose and went to chapel, very sick and still half drunk. Later in the day, when he had recovered sufficiently, he went with his tutor to Broad Street, where—

“Built in the form of Pidgeon-pye,
A house there is for rooks to lie
and roost in.
Thither to take the oaths I went,
My tutor’s conscience well content
to trust in.
Their laws, their articles of grace
Forty, I think (save half a brace),
was willing
To swear to; swore, engag’d my soul,
And paid the swearing-broker whole
ten shilling.
Full half a pound I paid him down,
To live in the most p——d town,
o’ th’ nation.”

It must not be understood, however, that such orgies characterised the ceremony of matriculation. This writer of fluent doggerel was a gentleman commoner, but he seems to have caught at every lax point that he personally observed as a target for his wit. The more sober matriculation, both literally and figuratively, of George Colman the younger can be most suitably placed in the other side of the scale. “On my entrance at Oxford,” he wrote, “as a member of Christ Church, I was too foppish a follower of the prevailing fashions to be a reverential observer of academical dress—in truth, I was an egregious little puppy—and I was presented to the Vice-Chancellor, to be matriculated, in a grass-green coat, with the furiously-bepowder’d pate of an ultra-coxcomb; both of which are proscribed by the Statutes of the University. Much courtesy is shown, in the ceremony of matriculation, to the boys who come from Eton and Westminster; insomuch that they are never examined in respect to their knowledge of the School Classicks—their competency is considered as a matter of course—but, in subscribing the articles of their matriculation oaths, they sign their praenomen in Latin; I wrote, therefore, Georgeius—thus, alas! inserting a redundant E—and, after a pause, said enquiringly to the Vice-Chancellor—looking up in his face with perfect naiveté—‘pray, sir, am I to add Colmanus?’

“My Terentian father, who stood at my right elbow, blush’d at my ignorance—the Tutor (a piece of sham marble) did not blush at all—but gave a Sardonick grin, as if Scagliola had moved a muscle!

“The good-natur’d Vice drollingly answer’d me—that the surnames of certain profound authors, whose comparatively modern works were extant, had been latinized; but that a Roman termination tack’d to the patronymick of an English gentleman of my age and appearance, would rather be a redundant formality. There was too much delicacy in the worthy Doctor’s satire for my green comprehension—and I walk’d back, unconscious of it, to my College—strutting along in the pride of my unstatutable curls and coat, and practically breaking my oath, the moment I had taken it.”