Is deserving a place in our treasury. He one day asked his learned college contemporary, Dr. John Taylor, editor of Demosthenes, “why he talked of selling his horse?” “Because,” replied the doctor, “I cannot afford to keep him in these hard times.” “You should keep a mare,” rejoined Foster, “according to Horace—
‘Æquam memento rebus in arduis
Servare.’”
A TRAIT OF BARROW.
Soon after that great, good, and loyal son of Granta, Dr. Isaac Barrow, was made a prebend of Salisbury, says Dr. Pope, “I overheard him say, ‘I wish I had five hundred pounds.’ ‘That’s a large sum for a philosopher,’ observed Dr. Pope; ‘what would you do with so much?’ ‘I would,’ said he, ‘give it to my sister for a portion, that would procure her a good husband.’ A few months after,” adds his memorialist, “he was made happy by receiving the above sum,” which he so much desired, “for putting a new life into the corps of his new prebend.”
INVETERATE SMOKERS.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been famous for inveterate smokers. Amongst them was the learned Dr. Isaac Barrow, who said “it helped his thinking.” His illustrious pupil, Newton, was scarcely less addicted to the “Indian weed,” and every body has heard of his hapless courtship, when, in a moment of forgetfulness, he popped the lady’s finger into his burning pipe, instead of popping the question, and was so chagrined, that he never could be persuaded to press the matter further. Dr. Parr was allowed his pipe when he dined with the first gentleman in Europe, George the Fourth, and when refused the same indulgence by a lady at whose house he was staying, he told her, “she was the greatest tobacco-stopper he had ever met with.” The celebrated Dr. Farmer, of black-letter memory, preferred the comforts of the parlour of Emmanuel College, of which he was master, and a “yard of clay” (there were no hookahs in his day,) to a bishopric, which dignity he twice refused, when offered to him by Mr. Pitt. Another learned
LOVER OF TOBACCO,
And eke of wit, mirth, puns, and pleasantry, was the famous Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, the never-to-be-forgotten composer of the good old catch—