Who, then a student of St. John’s College, used to frequent the same parties that Barnard did, who was of King’s. Barnard used to taunt him with his stupidity; “and,” said Judge Hardinge, who records the anecdote, “he one day half killed Barnard with laughter, who had been taunting him, as usual, with the simplicity of the following excuse and remonstrance: You are always running your rigs upon me and calling me ‘stupid fellow;’ and it is very cruel, now, that’s what it is; for you don’t consider that a broad-wheeled wagon went over my head when I was ten years old.” And here I must remark upon the injustice of persons reflecting upon the English Universities, as their enemies often do, because every man who succeeds in getting a degree does not turn out a Porson or a Newton. I knew one Cantab, a Caius man, to whom writing a letter to his friends was such an effort, that he used to get his medical attendant to give him an ægrotat (put him on the sick list,) and, besides,
KEEP HIS DOOR SPORTED FOR A WEEK,
till the momentous task was accomplished. And two Oxonians were of late
PLUCKED AT THEIR DIVINITY EXAMINATION,
Because one being asked, “Who was the Mediator, between God and man?” answered, “The Archbishop of Canterbury.” The other being questioned as to “why our Saviour sat on the right hand of God?” replied, “Because the Holy Ghost sat on the left.”
COMPLIMENT TO THE MEN OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXON.
“The men of Exeter College, Oxon,” says Fuller, in his Church History, “consisted chiefly of Cornish and Devonshire men, the gentry of which latter, Queen Elizabeth used to say, are courtiers by birth. And as these western men do bear away the bell for might and sleight in wrestling, so the scholars here have always acquitted themselves with credit in Palæstra literaria.”
And writing of this society reminds me that