What’s Doctor, and Dr., and Doctor writ so?
Doctor Long, Doctor Short, and Doctor Askew.
A BISHOP’S INTEREST.
Bishop Porteus said of himself, when holding the See of Chester, that he “had not interest enough to command a Cheshire cheese.”
OXFORD FAMOUS FOR ITS SOPHISTS.
“For sophistry, such as you may call corrupt and vain,” says Wood, in the first volume of his Annals, “which we had derived from the Parisians, Oxford hath in ancient time been very famous, especially when many thousands of students were in her, equalling, if not exceeding, that university from whence they had it; a token of which, with its evil consequences, did lately remain,—I mean the quadragesimall exercises, which were seldom performed, or at least finished without the help of Mars. In the reign of Henry the Third, and before, the schools were much polluted with it, and became so notorious, that it corrupted other arts; and so would it afterwards have continued, had it not been corrected by public authority for the present, though in following times it increased much again, that it could not be rooted out. Some there were that wrote, others that preached against it, demonstrating the evil consequences thereof, and the sad end of those that delighted in it. Jacobus Januensis reports that one Mr. Silo, a Master of the University of Paris, and Professor of Logic, had a scholar there, with whom he was very familiar: and being excellent in the art of sophistry, spared not all occasions, whether festival or other day, to study it. This sophister being sick, and almost brought to death’s door, Master Silo earnestly desired him, that after his death he would return to him and give him information concerning his state, and how it fared with him. The sophister dying, returned according to promise, with his hood stuffed with notes of sophistry, and the inside lined with flaming fire, telling him, that that was the reward which he had bestowed upon him for the renown he had before for sophistry; but Mr. Silo esteeming it a small punishment, stretched out his hand towards him, on which a drop or spark of the said fire falling, was very soon pierced through with terrible pain; which accident the defunct or ghost beholding, told Silo, that he need not wonder at that small matter, for he was burning in that manner all over. Is it so? (saith Silo) well, well, I know what I have to do. Whereupon, resolving to leave the world, and enter himself into religion, called his scholars about him, took his leave of, and dismissed them with these metres:—
‘Linquo coax[3] ranis, cras[4] corvis, vanaque[5] vanis,
Ad Logicam pergo, que mortis non timet[6] ergo.’
[3] Luxuriam scil. luxuriosis, vel potius rixas sophistis.
[4] Avaritiam scil. avaris.