COLLEGE FUN.
“Previous to my attending Cambridge,” says Henry Angelo, in his Reminiscences, “one of my scholars (whom I had taught at Westminster School,) at Trinity College, engaged an Irish fencing-master, named Fitzpatrick,” more remarkable for his native humour than science, and when he had taken too much of the cratur, “was amusing to the collegians, who had engaged him merely to keep up their exercise.” One day, during a bout, some wag placed a bottle of his favourite “mountain dew” (whisky) on the chimney-piece, which proved so attractive, “that as his sips increased, so did the numerous hits he received, till the first so far prevailed, aided by exertion and the heat of the weather, that he lay, tandem, to all appearance dead.” To keep the fun up, he was stripped and laid out like a corpse, with a shroud on, a coffin close to him, and four candles placed on each side, ready to light on his recovery. This jeu de plaisanterie might have been serious; “however, Master Push-carte took care not to push himself again into the same place.”
THE KING OF DENMARK AT CAMBRIDGE.
When the late King of Denmark was in England, in 1763, when he visited Eton, &c., he is said to have made a brief sojourn at Cambridge, where he was received with “all the honours,” and took up his abode (as is usual for persons of his rank) in the lodge of the Master of Trinity. In his majesty’s establishments for learned purposes, as well as throughout all Germany, &c., no provision is made for lodging and otherwise providing for the comforts of students, as in the two English universities; and when he surveyed the principal court of Trinity, he is said to have had so little notion of an English university, that he asked “whether that court did not comprise the whole of the university of Cambridge?” This royal anecdote reminds me that his present gracious Majesty,
WILLIAM THE FOURTH, ANNOUNCED HIS INTENTION TO VISIT CAMBRIDGE.
As in duty bound, upon his accession to the throne of his ancestors, a loyal congratulatory address was voted by the members of the University of Cambridge in full senate. This was shortly afterwards presented to his Majesty at St. James’s Palace by the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr. George Thackery, D.D., Provost of King’s College, at the head of a large body of the heads of colleges, and others, en robe. His majesty not only received it most graciously, but with that truly English expression that goes home to the bosom of every Briton, told Dr. Thackery he “should shortly take pot-luck with him in Cambridge.” The term, too, is worthy of particular notice, since it expresses his Majesty’s kind consideration for the contents of the university chest, and the pockets of its members. Oxford, it is well known, is still smarting under the heavy charges incident upon the memorable visit of his late Majesty, George the Fourth, in 1814, with the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia and their suites. It would be no drawback upon the popularity of princes if they did take “pot-luck” with their subjects oftener than they do. Let there be no drawback upon hospitality, but let the “feast of reason and the flow of soul” suffice for the costly banquet. In olden times, our monarchs took pot-luck both at Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere, without their subjects being the less loyal. Queen Elizabeth and James the First and Second were frequent visitors at both those seats of learning. Elizabeth, indeed, that flower of British monarchs, suffered no designing minister to shake her confidence in her people’s loyalty. She did not confine her movements to the dull routine of two or three royal palaces,—her palace was her empire. She went about “doing good” by the light of her countenance. She, and not her minister, was the people’s idol. I therefore come to the conclusion, that the expressed determination of his majesty, William the Fourth, to take pot-luck with his good people of the University of Cambridge, is the dawn of a return of those wholesome practices of which we read in the works of our ANNALISTS, when
“’Twas merry in the hall,
And their beards wagged all.”
Wood relates, amongst other humorous incidents, that