A CAMBRIDGE D.D.,
Now no more, who is said to have been a great gourmand, and weighed something less than thirty stone, but not much. At the college table, where our D.D. daily took his meal, in order that he might the better put his hand upon the dainty morsels, being very corpulent, he caused a piece to be scooped out, to give him a fair chance. His chair was also so placed, that his belly was three inches from the table at sitting down, and when he had eaten till he touched it, his custom was to lay down his knife and fork and desist, lest, by eating too much, any dangerous malady should ensue. A waggish Fellow of his college, however, one day removed his chair double the distance from the table, which the doctor not observing, began to eat as usual. After taking more than his quantum, and finding that he was still an inch or two from the goal, he threw down his knife and fork in despair, exclaiming, he “was sure he was going to die;” but having explained the reason, he was relieved of his fears on hearing the joke had been played him.
THE INSIDE PASSENGER.
Every Cantab of the nineteenth century must remember our friend Smith of the Blue Boar, Trinity Street, charioteer of that now defunct vehicle and pair which used to ply between Cambridge, New-market, and Bury St. Edmunds, and on account of its celerity, and other marked qualities, was called “The Slow and Dirty” by Freshman, Soph, Bachelor, and Big-wig, now metamorphosed into a handsome four-in-hand, over which our friend Smith presides in a style worthy of the Club itself! He had one day, in olden time, pulled up at Botsham, midway between Newmarket and Cambridge, when there happened to be several Cantabs on the road, who were refreshing their nags at the “self-same” inn, the Swan, at which the Slow and Dirty made its daily halt. “Any passengers?” inquired Smith. “One inside,” said a Cambridge wag, standing by, whose eye was the moment caught by a young ass feeding on the nettles in a neighbouring nook. Having put his fellows up to the joke, Smith was invited in-doors and treated with a glass of grog; meanwhile, my gentleman with the long ears was popped inside the coach. Smith coming out, inquired after his passenger, whom he supposed one of his friends, the Cantabs, and learnt he was housed. “All right,” said Smith, and off he drove, followed quickly by our wag and party on horseback, who determined to be in at the denouement. Smith had not made much way, when our inside passenger, not finding himself in clover, popped his head out at one of the coach windows. The spectacle attracted the notice of many bipeds as they passed along; Smith, however, notwithstanding their laughter, “kept the even tenor of his way.” At Barnwell the boys huzzaed with more than their usual greetings, but still Smith kept on, unconscious of the cause. He no sooner made Jesus’ Lane, than crowds began to follow in his wake, and he dashed into the Blue-Boar yard with a tail more numerous than that upon the shoulders of which Dan O’Connell rode into the first Reformed Parliament, Feargus included. Down went the reins, as the ostlers came to the head of his smoking prads, and Smith was in a moment at the coach door, with one hand instinctively upon the latch, and the other raised to his hat, when the whole truth flashed upon his astonished eyes, and Balaam was safely landed, amidst peals of laughter, in which our friend Smith was not the least uproarious.
PALEY’S CELEBRATED SCHOOL ACT.
When Paley, in 1762, kept his act in the schools, previously to his entering the senate-house, to contend for mathematical honours, it was under the moderators, Dr. John Jebb, the famous physician and advocate of reform in church and state, and the learned Dr. Richard Watson, late Bishop of Llandaff. Johnson’s Questiones Philosophicæ was the book then commonly resorted to in the university for subjects usually disputed of in the schools; and he fixed upon two questions, in addition to his mathematical one, which to his knowledge had never before been subjects of disputation. The one was against Capital Punishments; the other against the Eternity of Hell Torments. As soon, however, as it came to the knowledge of the heads of the university that Paley had proposed such questions to the moderators, knowing his abilities, though young, lest it should give rise to a controversial spirit, the master of his college, Dr. Thomas, was requested to interfere and put a stop to the proceeding, which he did, and Bishop Watson thus records the fact in his Autobiography:—“Paley had brought me, for one of the questions he meant for his act, Æternitas pænarum contradicit Divinis Attributis! The Eternity of Hell Torments contrary to the Divine Attributes. I had accepted it. A few days afterwards he came to me in a great fright, saying, that the master of his college, Dr. Thomas, Dean of Ely, insisted on his not keeping on such a question. I readily permitted him to change it, and told him that, if it would lessen his master’s apprehensions, he might put a ‘non’ before ‘contradicit;’ making the question, The Eternity of Hell Torments not contrary to the Divine Attributes: and he did so.” In the following month of January he was senior wrangler.
HE WAS NOT FOND OF CLASSICAL STUDIES,
And used to declare he could read no Latin author with pleasure but Virgil: yet when the members’ prize was awarded to him for a Latin prose essay, in 1765, which he had illustrated with English notes, he was, strange enough, though his disregard of the classics was well known, suspected of being the author of the Latin only. The reverse was probably nearer the truth. It is notorious that