Rowlandson's Oxford

by A. Hamilton Gibbs

The moribund knight pursued his muse to the thirteenth verse, giving everybody and everything the lie. The editor of The Student, undoubtedly with the idea of pandering to all tastes, was careful to place these verses in between a translation of a Latin epigram—

“I stole from sweet Gumming two kisses in play,
But she from myself stole myself quite away;
I grieve not I play’d, tho’ so cruel the sport;
I’m more pleas’d than griev’d at the hurt.”

and an epistle in verse to Lord Cobham, written by Congrave, while in the very near neighbourhood, was—

“THE HERMAPHRODITE.
“From the Latin
“My mother, when she was with child of me,
Consulted heav’n what gender I should be.
Female, cried Mars; Apollo said, a Male;
Neither, quoth Juno; both your judgments fail.
My birth did prove the Goddess in the right;
Nor boy, nor girl, but an Hermaphrodite.
Again she ask’d them what my fate would be.
One said a sword, another said a tree;
Water a third, and they were right all three.
For from a tree I fell upon my sword,
Feet caught in boughs, head dangling in a ford.
Man, Woman, Neither, I at last was found,
Just as the Gods foretold, hang’d, stabb’d, and drown’d.”

A few numbers before that in which the coffee-house wit told the female student just precisely what he thought of her, the editor received a letter from another of these gentry at one of the coffee-houses. On behalf of all his brother Smarts, Mr Harry Didapper took it upon himself to offer a little friendly advice to the paper. He informed the editor that The Student was read with keen interest by them all, but that at times it indulged in boring and pompous articles which, however they pleased the editor himself, or the cultivated taste of his wig-maker, hosier and wine merchant, left them angry and disappointed. The Smarts wished to have no more abstract speculations and religious introspections. They wanted more brightness and humanity about the paper. Consequently in the next issue the editor published the following lamentation:—

“A RECEIPT FOR THE GOUT.
“Oh Gout! the plague of rich and great!
Thou cramping padlock of the feet!
Oh Gout! thou puzzling knotty point!
You nick man’s frame in every joint;
You, like inquisitors of Spain,
Rack, burn, and torture limbs to pain.
First, miner-like, you work below,
And sap man’s fortress by the toe....
And what is worse, the wounded part
Finds small relief from doctor’s art.
Great Wilmot’s skill confounded stands
When patient roars ... my toe! my hands!...
’Tis said that bees, when raging found,
Are charm’d to peace by tinkling sound;
Shrill lullabies in nurse’s strain
Asswage the froward bantling’s pain,
When cutting teeth, or ill-plac’d pin,
Molest the tender baby’s skin,
So when Gout-humours throb and ache,
The present soft prescription take.
In elbow-chair majectick sit
In full high twinge, yet scorn to fret;
Divert the pain with generous wine;
Read news from Flanders and the Rhine;
Hold up the toe like Pope of Rome;
Forbear to scold, and swear, and fume;
Let double flannel guard the part,
To mitigate the dreadful smart;
Wrap round the joint this harmless verse;
And let dame Patience be your nurse.”

Would any doctor in these times prescribe wine as a remedy against gout? Whether the advice was sound or not, the Smarts appeared to have been appeased, for there came no further complaints as to the stodginess of the fare served up to them.

In the same number of The Student there appeared a letter from Bishop Atterbury to his son Obadiah, who was up at the House. How the editor procured it is not recorded, nor is it easy to see why he included it in his columns. It cannot have been vastly entertaining to a list of subscribers who devoted most of their time to ale and coffee-houses, or in dallying with Amaryllis in the shade of Merton Wall. It is greatly interesting to-day, however, as an example of what an eighteenth-century parent indicted to his son. The contrast between this letter and the replies one receives in 1911 in answer to one’s brief epistles written, mostly, solely in order to “touch the dad down for a bit” is not unstriking.

“Dear Obby,—I thank you for your letter, because there are manifest signs in it of your endeavouring to excel yourself, and in consequence to please me. You have succeeded in both respects, and will always succeed, if you think it worth your while to consider what you write and to whom, and let nothing, tho’ of a trifling nature, pass through your pen negligently. Get but the way of writing correctly and justly, time and use will teach you to write readily afterwards. Not but that too much care may give a stiffness to your style, which ought in all letters by all means to be avoided. The turn of them should always be natural and easy, for they are an image of private and familiar conversation. I mention this with respect to the four or five first lines of yours, which have an air of poetry, and do therefore naturally resolve themselves into blank verses. I send you your letter again, that you may make the same observation. But you took the hint of that thought from a poem, and it is no wonder therefore, that you heightened the phrase a little when you were expressing it. The rest is as it should be; and particularly there is an air of duty and sincerity, that if it comes from your heart, is the most acceptable present you can make me. With these qualities an incorrect letter would please me, and without them the finest thoughts and language would make no lasting impression upon me. The great Being says, you know—my son, give me thy heart—implying that without it all other gifts signify nothing. Let me conjure you therefore never to say anything, either in a letter or common conversation, that you do not think, but always to let your mind and your words go together on the most slight and trivial occasions. Shelter not the least degree of insincerity under the notion of a compliment, which, as far as it deserves to be practis’d by a man of probity, is only the most civil and obliging way of saying what you really mean; and whoever employs it otherwise, throws away truth for breeding; I need not tell you how little his character gets by such an exchange. I say not this as if I suspected that in any part of your letter you intended only to write what was proper, without any regard to what was true; for I am resolved to believe that you were in earnest from the beginning to the end of it, as much as I am when I tell you that I am,—Your loving father, etc.”

The editor of The Student pronounced himself the champion of many and various causes. For instance, he organised in his columns a fund for the maintenance of the widows and children of deceased clergy in straightened circumstances, which did an immense amount of good. His appeal for money was nobly responded to in Oxford, and widely taken up by the public. Another matter against which he took up the cudgels was the fondness shown so largely by the fair sex for indulging in masculine sports in masculine attire—more particularly hunting. From his account it is clear that a very great percentage of ladies was horsey to the exclusion of all else, even, in his eyes, of femininity.