Is a living example of the fact, that it does not require great learning to make a great general; nor is great learning always necessary to complete the character of the head of a college. The late Rector of Exeter College, Dr. Cole, raised that society, by his prudent management, from the very reduced rank in which he found it amongst the other foundations of Oxford, to a flourishing and high reputation for good scholarship. Yet he is said one day to have complimented a student at collections, by saying, after the gentleman had construed his portion of Sophocles, “Sir, you have construed your Livy very well.” He nevertheless redeemed his credit by one day posing a student, during his divinity examination, with asking him, in vain, “What Christmas day was?” Another Don of the same college, once asking a student of the society some divinity question, which he was equally at a loss for an answer, he exclaimed—“Good God, sir, you the son of a clergyman, and not answer such a question as that?” Aristotle was of opinion that knowledge could only be acquired, but our tutor seems to have thought, like the opponents of Aristotle, that a son of a parson ought to be born to it.
ANOTHER OXONIAN WAS POSED,
Whom I knew, yet was by no means deficient in scholastic learning, and withal a great wag. He was asked, at the divinity examination, how many sacraments there were. This happened at the time that the Catholic question was in the high road to the House of Lords, under the auspices of the Duke of Wellington, and he had been cramming his upper story with abundance of Catholic Faith from the writings of Faber, Gandolphy, and the Bishops of Durham and Exeter. “How many sacraments are there, sir?” repeated the Examiner (of course referring to the Church of England.) The student paused on, and the question was repeated a second time; “Why—a—suppose—we—a—say half a dozen,” was the reply. It is needless to add he was plucked. The following
LAPSUS GRAMMATICÆ
Is attributed to a certain D.D. of Exeter, who, having undertaken to lionize one of the foreign princes of the many that accompanied the late king and the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia to Oxford, in 1814, a difficulty arose between them as to their medium of communication; the prince being ignorant of the English language, and the doctor no less so with respect to modern foreign languages. In this dilemma the latter proposed an interchange of ideas by means of the fingers, in the following unique address:—“Intelligisne colloquium cum digitalibus tuis?”
It would be somewhat awkward for certain alumni if his Grace of Wellington should issue an imperative decree, as Chancellor,
THAT THE LATIN TONGUE BE USED,
(As Wood says, in his annals, the famous Archbishop Bancroft did, on being raised to the dignity of Chancellor of Oxford in 1608,) “By the students in their halls and colleges, whereby,” said his Grace, “the young as well as the old may be inured to a ready and familiar delivery of their minds in that language, whereof there was now so much use both in studies and common conversation; for it was now observed (and so it may in these present times, adds Wood,) that it was a great blemish to the learned men of this nation, that they being complete in all good knowledge, yet they were not able promptly and aptly to express themselves in Latin, but with hesitation and circumlocution, which ariseth only from disuse.”
EFFECT OF HABIT.
Dr. Fothergill, when Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, was a singular as well as a learned man, and would not have been seen abroad minus his wig and gown for a dukedom. One night a fire broke out in the lodge, which spread with such rapidity, that it was with difficulty Mrs. F. and family escaped the fury of the flames; and this she no sooner did than, naturally enough, the question was, “Where is the Doctor?” No Doctor was to be found; and the cry was he had probably perished in the flames. All was bustle, and consternation, and tears, till suddenly, to the delight of all, he emerged from the burning pile, full-dressed, as usual, his wig something the worse for being nearly ‘done to a turn;’ but he deemed it indecorous for him to appear otherwise, though he stayed to robe at the risk of his life.