Tam Marti quam Mercurio.
I sing not of Rome or Grecian mad games.
The Pythian, Olympic, and such like hard names;
Your patience awhile, with submission, I beg,
I strive but to honour the feast of Coll. Reg.
Derry down, down, down, derry down.
No Thracian brawls at our rites e’er prevail,
We temper our mirth with plain sober mild Ale;
The tricks of Old Circe deter us from Wine:
Though we honour a boar, we won’t make ourselves Swine.
Derry down, &c.
Great Milo was famous for slaying his Ox,
Yet he proved but an ass in cleaving of blocks:
But we had a hero for all things was fit,
Our Motto displays both his Valour and Wit.
Derry down, &c.
Stout Hercules labour’d, and look’d mighty big,
When he slew the half-starved Erymanthian Pig;
But we can relate such a stratagem taken,
That the stoutest of Boars could not save his own Bacon.
Derry down, &c.
So dreadful his bristle-back’d foe did appear,
You’d have sworn he had got the wrong Pig by the ear,
But instead of avoiding the mouth of the beast,
He ramm’d in a volume, and cried—Græcum est.
Derry down, &c.
In this gallant action such fortitude shown is,
As proves him no coward, nor tender Adonis;
No Armour but Logic; by which we may find,
That Logic’s the bulwark of body and mind.
Derry down, &c.
Ye Squires that fear neither hills nor rough rocks,
And think you’re full wise when you out-wit a Fox;
Enrich your poor brains, and expose them no more,
Learn Greek, and seek glory from hunting the Boar.
Derry down, &c.
CLEAVING THE BLOCK,
Is another custom that either was, or is, annually celebrated at Queen’s College, Oxford, not pro bono publico, it seems, but pro bono cook-o! and has a reference, probably, to the exploit in which Milo “proved but an ass,” as observed in the second line of the third verse of the foregoing song. On dit, every Christmas, New Year’s, or some other day, at that season of the year, a block of wood is placed at the hall-door, where the cook stands with his cleaver, which he delivers to each member of the College, as he passes out of the Hall, who endeavours, at one stroke, to sever the block of wood; failing to do which, he throws down half-a-crown, in which sum he is mulct. This is done by every one in succession, should they, as is invariably the case, prove themselves asses in “cleaving of blocks.” But should any one out-Milo Milo, he would be entitled to all the half-crowns previously forfeited: otherwise the whole goes to the cook.
THE MISFORTUNE OF BEING LITTLE.
Lord Byron has said, that a man is unfortunate whose name will admit of being punned upon. The lament might apply to all peculiarities of person and habit. Dr. Joseph Jowett, the late regius professor of civil law at Cambridge, though a learned man, an able lecturer, one that generously fostered talent in rising young men, and a dilettante musician of a refined and accurate taste, was remarkable for some singularities, as smallness of stature, and for gardening upon a small scale. This gave the late Bishop Mansel or Porson (for it has been attributed to both, and both were capable of perpetrating it) an occasion to throw off
THE FOLLOWING LATIN EPIGRAM:
Exiguum hunc hortum Jowettulus iste
Exiguus, vallo et muriit exiguo:
Exiguo hoc horto forsan Jowettulus iste
Exiguus mentem prodidit exiguum.