SUCKING THE MILK OF BOTH UNIVERSITIES
Is an epithet applied to those members who, after graduating at one proceeds to a like degree at the other. A party one day disputing as to whether Oxford or Cambridge was the more distinguished seat of learning,—“It can’t affect me,” exclaimed one of them, “for I was educated at both.” Upon which a wag observed, “He reminded him of a calf that was suckled by two cows.” “How so?” said the other. “Why, it turned out the greatest calf I ever knew,” was the retort.
Amongst the musical professors of Cambridge, and not the least, who was organist of King’s College also, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was Dr. Thomas Tudway. He was a notorious wag, and when several of the members of the University of Cambridge expressed their discontent at the paucity of the patronage, and the rigour of the government of the “proud Duke of Somerset,” whose statue graces their senate house, he facetiously observed—
“The Chancellor rides us all without a bit in our mouths.”
LIKE RABELAIS,
In him the passion for punning was strong in death, though less profane. When he laid dangerously ill of the quinsy (of which he soon after died,) his physician, seeing some hope, turned from his patient to Mrs. Tudway, who was weeping in despair at his danger, and observed, “Courage, madam! the Dr. will get up May-hill yet, he has swallowed some nourishment.” Upon which Dr. Tudway said, as well as his disease would permit him to articulate, “Don’t mind him, my dear: one swallow don’t make a summer.”