Gamesomely inclined, were driving, tandem, for the neighbourhood of Woodstock, when passing a stingy old cur, yclept a country gentleman, who had treated some one of the party a shabby trick, a thought struck them that now was the hour for revenge. They drove in bang up style to the front of the old man’s mansion, and coolly told the servant, that they had just seen his master, who had desired them to say, that he was to serve them up a good dinner and wine, and in the meantime show them where the most game was to be found. This was done, and after a roaring day’s sport, and a full gorge of roast, baked and boiled, washed down with the best ale, port and sherry, the old boy’s cellar could furnish, they made Brazen-nose College, Oxon, 8, p.m., much delighted with the result, and luckily the affair went no further, at the time at least.
BISHOP WATSON’S OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS PROGRESS AT CAMBRIDGE.
“Soon after the death of my father,” says this learned prelate, in his Autobiography, published in 1816, “I was sent to the university, and admitted a sizer of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the 3d of November, 1754. I did not know a single person in the university, except my tutor, Mr. Backhouse, who had been my father’s scholar, and Mr. Preston, who had been my own school-fellow. I commenced my academic studies with great eagerness, from knowing that my future fortune was to be wholly of my own fabricating, being certain that the slender portion which my father had left to me (300l.) would be barely sufficient to carry me through my education. I had no expectations from relations; indeed I had not a relative so near as a first cousin in the world, except my mother, and a brother and sister, who were many years older than me. My mother’s maiden name was Newton; she was a very charitable and good woman, and I am indebted to her (I mention it with filial piety) for imbuing my young mind with principles of religion, which have never forsaken me. Erasmus, in his little treatise, entitled Antibarbarorum, says, that the safety of states depend upon three things, a proper or improper education of the prince, upon public preachers, and upon school-masters; and he might with equal reason have added, upon mothers; for the code of the mother precedes that of the school-master, and may stamp upon the rasa tabula of the infant mind, characters of virtue and religion which no time can efface. Perceiving that the sizers were not so respectfully looked upon by the pensioners and scholars of the house as they ought to have been, inasmuch as the most learned and leading men of the university have even arisen from that order (Magister Artis ingenique largitor venter,) I offered myself for a scholarship a year before the usual time of the sizers sitting, and succeeded on the 2nd of May, 1757. This step increased my expenses in college, but it was attended with a great advantage. It was the occasion of my being particularly noticed by Dr. Smith, the master of the college. He was, from the examination he gave me, so well satisfied with the progress I had made in my studies, that out of the sixteen who were elected scholars, he appointed me to a particular one (Lady Jermyn’s) then vacant, and in his own disposal; not, he said to me, as being better than other scholarships, but as a mark of his approbation; he recommended Saunderson’s Fluxions, then just published, and some other mathematical books, to my perusal, and gave, in a word, a spur to my industry, and wings to my ambition. I had, at the time of my being elected a scholar, been resident in college two years and seven months, without having gone out of it for a single day. During that period I had acquired some knowledge of Hebrew, greatly improved myself in Greek and Latin, made considerable progress in mathematics and natural philosophy, and studied with much attention Locke’s works, King’s book on the Origin of Evil, Puffendorf’s Treatise De Officio Hominis et Civis, and some other books on similar subjects; I thought myself, therefore, entitled to some little relaxation. Under this persuasion I set forward, May 30, 1757, to pay my elder and only brother a visit at Kendal. He was the first curate of the New Chapel there, to the structure of which he had subscribed liberally. He was a man of lively parts, but being thrown into a situation where there was no great room for the display of his talents, and much temptation to convivial festivity, he spent his fortune, injured his constitution, and died when I was about the age of thirty-three, leaving a considerable debt, all of which I paid immediately, though it took almost my all to do it. My mind did not much relish the country, at least it did not relish the life I led in that country town; the constant reflection that I was idling away my time mixed itself with every amusement, and poisoned all the pleasures I had promised myself from the visit; I therefore took a hasty resolution of shortening it, and returned to college in the beginning of September, with a determined purpose to make my Alma Mater the mother of my fortunes. That, I well remember, was the expression I used to myself, as soon as I saw the turrets of King’s College Chapel, as I was jogging on a jaded nag between Huntingdon and Cambridge. I was then only a Junior Soph; yet two of my acquaintances, the year below me, thought that I knew so much more of mathematics than they did, that they importuned me to become their private tutor. I undoubtedly wished to have had my time to myself, especially till I had taken my degree; but the narrowness of my circumstances, accompanied with a disposition to improve, or, more properly speaking, with a desire to appear respectable, induced me to comply with their request. From that period, for above thirty years of my life, and as long as my health lasted, a considerable portion of my time was spent in instructing others without much instructing myself, or in presiding at disputations in philosophy or theology, from which, after a certain time, I derived little intellectual improvement. Whilst I was an under-graduate, I kept a great deal of what is called the best company—that is, of idle fellow-commoners, and other persons of fortune—but their manners never subdued my prudence; I had strong ambition to be distinguished, and was sensible that wealth might plead some excuse for idleness, extravagance and folly in others; the want of wealth could plead more for me. When I used to be returning to my room at one or two in the morning, after spending a jolly evening, I often observed a light in the chamber of one of the same standing with myself; this never failed to excite my jealousy, and the next day was always a day of hard study. I have gone without my dinner a hundred times on such occasions. I thought I never entirely understood a proposition in any part of mathematics or natural philosophy, till I was able, in a solitary walk, obstipo capite atque ex porrecto labello, to draw the scheme in my head, and go through every step of the demonstration without book, or pen and paper. I found this was a very difficult task, especially in some of the perplexed schemes and long demonstrations of the twelfth Book of Euclid, and in L’Hôpital’s Conic Sections, and in Newton’s Principia. My walks for this purpose were so frequent, that my tutor, not knowing what I was about, once reproved me for being a lounger. I never gave up a difficult point in a demonstration till I had made it out proprio marte; I have been stopped at a single step for three days. This perseverance in accomplishing whatever I undertook, was, during the whole of my active life, a striking feature in my character. But though I stuck close to abstract studies, I did not neglect other things; I every week imposed upon myself a task of composing a theme or declamation in Latin or English. I generally studied mathematics in the morning, and classics in the afternoon; and used to get by heart such parts of orations, either in Latin or Greek, as particularly pleased me. Demosthenes was the orator, Tacitus the historian, and Persius the satirist whom I most admired. I have mentioned this mode of study, not as thinking there was any thing extraordinary in it, since there were many under-graduates then, and have always been many in the University of Cambridge, and, for aught I know, in Oxford, too, who have taken greater pains. But I mention it because I feel a complacence in the recollections of days long since happily spent, hoc est vivere bis vita posse priori frui, and indulge in a hope, that the perusal of what I have written may chance to drive away the spirit of indolence and dissipation from young men; especially from those who enter the world with slender means, as I did. In January, 1759, I took my Bachelor of Arts’ degree. The taking of this first degree is a great era in academic life; it is that to which all the under-graduates of talent and diligence direct their attention. There is no seminary of learning in Europe in which youth are more zealous to excel during the first years of their education than in the University of Cambridge. I was the second wrangler of my year. In September, 1759, I sat for a Fellowship. At that time there never had been an instance of a Fellow being elected from among the junior Bachelors. The Master told me this as an apology for my not being elected, and bade me be contented till the next year. On the 1st of October, 1760, I was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, and put over the head of two of my seniors of the same year, who were, however, elected the next year. The old Master, whose memory I have ever revered, when he had done examining me, paid me this compliment, which was from him a great one:—‘You have done your duty to the College; it remains for the College to do theirs to you.’ I was elected the next day, and became assistant tutor to Mr. Backhouse in the following November.” Every body knows his subsequent career embraced his appointment to the several dignified University offices of Tutor, Moderator, Professor of Chemistry, and Regius Professor of Divinity, and that he died Bishop of Llandaff. I may here, as an apposite tail piece, add from Meadley’s Life of that celebrated scholar and divine,
PALEY’S SKETCH OF HIS EARLY ACADEMICAL LIFE.
In the year 1795, during one of his visits to Cambridge, Dr. Paley, in the course of a conversation on the subject, gave the following account of the early part of his own academical life; and it is here given on the authority and in the very words of a gentleman who was present at the time, as a striking instance of the peculiar frankness with which he was in the habit of relating adventures of his youth. “I spent the two first years of my under-graduateship (said he) happily, but unprofitably. I was constantly in society where we were not immoral, but idle and rather expensive. At the commencement of my third year, however, after having left the usual party at rather a late hour in the evening, I was awakened at five in the morning by one of my companions, who stood at my bedside and said, ‘Paley, I have been thinking what a d—d fool you are. I could do nothing, probably, were I to try, and can afford the life I lead: you can do every thing, and cannot afford it. I have had no sleep during the whole night on account of these reflections, and am now come solemnly to inform you, that, if you persist in your indolence, I must renounce your society.’ I was so struck (continued Paley) with the visit and the visiter, that I lay in bed great part of the day and formed my plan: I ordered my bed-maker to prepare my fire every evening, in order that it might be lighted by myself; I rose at five, read during the whole of the day, except such hours as chapel and hall required, allotting each portion of time its peculiar branch of study; and, just before the closing of gates (nine o’clock) I went to a neighbouring coffee-house, where I constantly regaled upon a mutton-chop and a dose of milk punch: and thus on taking my bachelor’s degree, I became senior wrangler.” He, too, filled the trustworthy and dignified office of Tutor of his College, and deserved, though he did not die in possession of, a bishopric.
THE LOUNGER. BY AN OXONIAN.
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 laced hat;
Then step to my neighbours, 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 nodes, their ellipses, and space,
The seat of the soul, and new systems on high,
In holes, as abstruse as their mysteries, lie.
From the coffee-house then I to Tennis away,
And at five I post back to my College to pray:
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.