"Buzfuz."
"P.S. 'What's in a name?' is a question that has been often asked. I find that 'Margarate of Glycerine' is not so pretty as her name—she's Fat."
MR. PETERLOO BROWN'S EXAMINATION OF THE OXFORD STATUTES.
"Dear Mr. Punch,
"I appeal to you in a case of difficulty, and trust that my familiarity will not beget your contempt. My name is Brown: not an uncommon surname, perhaps, but I am distinguished by my Christian name of Peterloo. My eldest lad is called after me, and it is in his behalf, Mr. Punch, that I crave your advice. He is at present an Eton boy, but he will soon be ready to be an Oxford man, and I am now looking forward to his matriculation. You are, doubtless, Sir, aware that every one who goes through that form has to subscribe to certain oaths and conditions, before he can be admitted to the privileges of the University. I myself never had the benefit of a University education, but I am well aware how it helps a man to gain a position in society—a position which my rapid rise to fortune has only in part secured to me; for there are, Mr. Punch, aristocrats by birth, who turn up their noses at us aristocrats by wealth, and yet will stoop to—— however, to return to my son. I am determined that he shall not want for advantages; but, as I have a certain sort of squeamishness about a person taking oaths that he does not know the meaning of, and swearing to observe statutes of whose nature he is unaware, I sent to Oxford for a copy of the University Statutes, that I might run my eye over them, and see what were the laws that governed the noble, the great, the famous, the—in short, the enlightened place, the University of Oxford. The book is now before me:—'Parecbolæ sive Excerpta e corpore Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis:' and a copy is, I believe, presented to every undergraduate at his matriculation, that he may be fully aware of the laws that he has sworn to obey. The Statutes I find to be written in a Latin form—I cannot say, in a dead language, for it is of a kind very much resembling the living, and of that description vulgarly termed 'Dog' Latin; so that I, who never got further than Eutropius, and whose acquaintance with the language has become rusty from want of use, can easily make out a translation of the sentences. I find that my son will have to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, which, I dare say, is all very proper; take the Oath of Allegiance, which is quite right; and also, the Oath of Supremacy, in which he will have to say, that he, Peterloo Brown, does, 'from his heart, abhor, detest, and abjure, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position that Princes, excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever.' Now, although I may be secretly of opinion that my lad might as well swear to any Bosh, as all this about the excommunicate Princes, yet I pass this over, and proceed to the Statutes themselves.
Nobody shall Wear any other Clothes than those of a Black or Subfusk Hue.
"I find that a great part of the book is about the keeping of terms; the granting of various kinds of degrees, of congregations, convocations, dispensations, and all that sort of thing; and I then come—under the head 'Tit. XIV. De Vestitu et Habitu Scholastico'—to the Statutes that more immediately concern my son Peterloo. And this is the result of my search.