Parker says, in his Musical Memoirs, that the Oxford scholars once hissed Madame Mara, conceiving she assumed too much importance in her bearing. No wonder they so treated Signor Samperio, one evening at a concert, attracted, when he came forward to sing, by his “tall, lank figure, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and shrill voice;” in fact, they hissed him off before he had half got through his cavatina. The gentleman who acted as steward was deeply moved at his situation, and, going up to Samperio, endeavoured to soothe him. But the signor, not at all hurt, replied, “O, sare, never mind; dey may hissa me as much as dey please, if I getti di money.” Another anecdote is told of—
TWO OXFORD SCHOLARS POSING DR. HAYES,
The late musical professor, who was some six feet high, and scarcely inferior in bulk to the famous Essex miller. He had at last so much difficulty in getting in and out of a stage coach, that whenever he went from Oxford to London to conduct the annual performances at St. Paul’s, for the benefit of the Sons of the Clergy, which he did for many years gratis, his custom was to engage a whole seat to himself, and when once in and seated to remain so till the end of the journey. The fact became known to two Oxford wags, who resolved to pose the Doctor, and to that end engaged the other two inside places, and taking care to be there before him, seated themselves in the opposite corners, one to the right the other to the left, and there the Doctor found them, on arriving to take his place. “How was he to dispose of his corpus?” was the query: they had a clear right to their seats, and no alternative seemed left him, as they declined moving, but to place his head in one corner and his feet in the other. At last our Oxonians, having fully enjoyed the dilemma in which they had placed the Doctor, consented to give way, confessed their purpose, and even the Doctor had the good sense to laugh at his own expense.
GROSS INDEED.
When the celebrated Cantab, and editor of Lucretius, Gilbert Wakefield, was convicted of a libel before the late Judge Grose, who sentenced him to fine and imprisonment, turning from the bar, he said, with the spirit of a Frenchman, it was—“gross indeed.” To the same learned Cantab, Dyer attributes the following—
PUN UPON PYE.
Being asked once his opinion of the poetry of Pye, the then Poet Laureat, his reply was, that he thought very handsomely of some of Mr. P.’s poems, which he had read. This did not suffice, and he was pressed for his opinion of the Laureat-Ode that had just appeared in the public prints. Not having seen it, he desired his friend to read it to him, and the introductory lines containing something about the singing of birds, Wakefield abruptly silenced him with this happy allusion to the Laureat’s name, in the following nursery rhymes:—
“And when the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing:
And was not this a dainty dish
To set before a king.”