Place me on Scotland’s bleakest hill,
Provided I can pay my bill,
Stay ev’ry thought of sorrow;
There falling sleet, or frost, or rain,
Attack a soul resolved, in vain—
It may be fair to-morrow.
VII.
To Haddington then let me stray,
And take Joe Pullen’s tree away,
I’ll ne’er complain of Phœbus;
But while he scorches up the grass,
I’ll fill a bumper to my lass,
And toast her in a rebus.
[10] Churton says, in his Lives of the Founders of Brazenose College, Oxford, that “Manciples, the purveyors general of Colleges and Halls, were formerly men of so much consequence, that, to check their ambition, it was ordered by an express statute, that no Manciple should be Principal of a Hall.”
QUEERING A DUN.
A Cambridge wag who was skilled in the science of electricity, as well as in the art of ticking, having got in pretty deep with his tailor, who was continually dunning him for payment, resolved to give snip “a settler,” as he said, the next time he mounted his stairs. He accordingly charged his electrifying machine much deeper than usual, and knowing pretty well the time of snip’s approach, watched his coming to the foot of the stairs where he kept, and ere he could reach the door, fixed the conductor to the brass handle. The tailor having long in vain sought occasion to catch him with his outer door not sported, was so delighted at finding it so, that, resolving not to lose time, he seized the handle of the inner door, so temptingly exposed to view, determining to introduce himself to his creditor sans ceremonie. No sooner, however, did his fingers come in contact with it than the shock followed, so violent, that it stunned him for an instant: but recovering himself, he bolted as though followed, as the poet says, by “ten thousand devils,” never again to return.
GRAY THE POET A CONTRAST TO BISHOP WARBURTON.
Gray’s letters, and Bishop Warburton’s polemical writings, show, that in more respects than one they were gifted with a like temperament: but in the following instances they form a contrast to each other. In the library of the British Museum is an interesting letter occasioned by the death of the Rev. N. Nicholls, LL.B., Rector of Loud and Bradwell, in Suffolk, from the pen of the now generally acknowledged author of “The Pursuits of Literature,” J. T. Mathias, M.A., in which he says, that shortly after that elegant scholar, and lamented divine, became a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen, a friend introduced him to Gray, the poet, at that time redolent with fame, and resident in Peter-House, to speak to whom was honourable; but to be admitted to his acquaintance, or to his familiarity, was the height of youthful, or indeed of any ambition. Shortly after this, Mr. N. was in a company of which Mr. Gray was one; and, as it became his youth, he did not enter into conversation, but listened with attention. The subject, however, being general and classical, and as Mr. Nicholls, even at that early period, was acquainted not only with the Greek and Latin, but with many of the best Italian poets, he ventured, with great diffidence, to offer a short remark, and happened to illustrate what he had said by an apposite quotation from Dante. At the name of Dante, Mr. Gray suddenly turned round to him and said, “Right: but have you read Dante, sir?” “I have endeavoured to understand him,” replied Mr. N. Mr. Gray being much pleased with the illustration, and with the taste which it evinced, addressed the chief of his discourse to him for the remainder of the evening, and invited him to his rooms in Pembroke Hall; and finding him ready and docile, he became attached to him and gave him instruction in the course of his studies, to which, adds Mr. Mathias, “I attribute the extent and value of his knowledge, and the peculiar accuracy and correct taste which distinguished him throughout life, and which I have seldom observed in any man in a more eminent degree.” And I wish every young man of genius might hear and consider, observes Mr. M., commenting upon an incident so honourable to all parties, “the