C. ROSS.
College Salting and Tucking of Freshmen (No. 17. p. 261., No. 19. p. 306.).—A circumstantial account of the tucking of freshmen, as practised in Exeter College, oxford, in 1636, is given in Mr. Martyn's Life of the First Lord Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 42.
"On a particular day, the senior under-graduates, in the evening, called the freshmen to the fire, and made them hold out their chins; whilst one of the seniors, with the nail of his thumb (which was left long for that purpose), grated off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then obliged him to drink a beer-glass of water and salt."
Lord Shaftesbury was a freshman at Exeter in 1636; and the story told by his biographer is, that he organised a resistance among his fellow freshmen to the practice, and that a row took place in the college hall, which led to the interference of the master, Dr. Prideaux, and to the abolition of the practice in Exeter College. The custom is there said to have been of great antiquity in the college.
The authority cited by Mr. Martyn for the story is a Mr. Stringer, who was a confidential friend of Lord Shaftesbury's, and made collections for a Life of him; and it probably comes from Lord Shaftesbury himself.
C.
Byron and Tacitus.—Although Byron is, by our school rules, a forbidden author, I sometimes contrive to indulge myself in reading his works by stealth. Among the passages that have struck my (boyish) fancy is the couplet in "The Bride of Abydos" (line 912),—
"Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it—peace!"
Engaged this morning in a more legitimate study, that of Tacitus, I stumbled upon this passage in the speech of Galgacus (Ag. xxx.),—