After the scole of Oxenfordė tho;

and so, after a fight with saucy tradesmen or foreigners, to bed, or Binsey for a hare, or to other night work.

II

“A meere young Gentleman of the Universitie is one that comes there to weare a gowne, and to say hereafter, he has been at the Universitie. His Father sent him thither, because hee heard there were the best Fencing and Dancing Schools. From these he has his Education, from his Tutor the oversight. The first element of his knowledge is to be shewne the Colleges, and initiated in a Taverne by the way, which hereafter hee will learne for himselfe. The two marks of his Senioritie, is the bare velvet of his gowne, and his proficiencie at Tennis, where when he can once play a Set, he is a Freshman no more. His Studie has commonly handsome shelves, his Bookes neate silk strings, which he shows to his Father’s man, and is loth to untye or take downe for feare of misplacing. Upon[Pg 313] foule days for recreation hee retyres thither, and looks over the prety booke his Tutor reades to him, which is commonly some short Historie, or a piece of Euphormio; for which his Tutor gives him Money to spend next day. His maine loytering is at the Library, where hee studies Armes and bookes of Honour, and turnes a Gentleman Critick in Pedigrees. Of all things hee endures not to be mistaken for a Scholler, and hates a black suit though it be of Satin. His companion is ordinarily some stale fellow, that has been notorious for an Ingle to gold hatbands, whom hee admires at first, afterward scornes. If hee have spirit or wit, he may light of better company, and may learne some flashes of wit, which may doe him Knight’s service in the Country hereafter. But he is now gone to the Inns of Court, where he studies to forget what hee learn’d before, his acquaintance and the fashion.”

From the Microcosmographie.

III

The younger Richard Graves (1715-1804), a contemporary of Shenstone and Whitfield at Pembroke, has sketched, in his own person, the unstable undergraduate of sixteen, in his progress from set to set. It is a very lasting type. “Having brought with me,” he writes, “the character of a tolerably good Grecian, I was invited to a very sober little party, who amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water. Here I continued six months, and[Pg 314] we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus, Phalaris’ Epistles, and such other Greek authors as are seldom read at school. But I was at length seduced from this mortified symposium to a very different party, a set of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of them west-country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned, and sang bacchanalian catches the whole evening. I began to think them the only wise men. Some gentlemen commoners, however, who considered the above-mentioned very low company (chiefly on account of the liquor they drank), good-naturedly invited me to their party; they treated me with port wine and arrack punch; and now and then, when they had drunk so much as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on their knees, and in short were what were then called ‘bucks of the first head.’”

IV

The Lownger

I rise about nine, get to Breakfast by ten,
Blow a Tune on my Flute, or perhaps make a Pen;
Read a Play till eleven, or cock my lac’d Hat;
Then step to my Neighbour’s, till Dinner to chat.
Dinner over, to Tom’s or to James’s I go,
The News of the Town so impatient to know:
While Law, Locke and Newton, and all the rum Race
That talk of their Modes, their Ellipses, and Space,
The Seat of the Soul, and new Systems on high,
In Holes, as abstruse as their Mysteries lye.
From the Coffee-house then I to Tennis away,
And at five I post back to my College to pray:[Pg 315]
I sup before eight, and secure from all Duns,
Undauntedly march to the Mitre, or Tuns;
Where in Punch or good Claret my Sorrows I drown,
And toss off a Bowl to the best in the Town:
At one in the Morning, I call what’s to pay,
Then Home to my College I stagger away.
Thus I tope all the Night, as I trifle all Day.
From the Oxford Sausage.