NUTS TO CRACK;

OR,

Quips, Quirks, Anecdote and Facete

OF

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

SCHOLARS.

BY THE
AUTHOR OF “FACETIÆ CANTABRIGIENSES,”
ETC. ETC. ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:
E. L. CAREY & A. HART.
1835.

PREFACE.

Though I intend this preface, prelude, or proem shall occupy but a single page, and be a facile specimen of the multum in parvo school, I find I have so little to say, I might spare myself the trouble of saying that little, only it might look a little odd (excuse my nibbing my pen) if, after writing a book, which by the way, may prove no book at all, I should introduce it to my readers,—did I say “Readers?”—what a theme to dilate upon! But stop, stop, Mr. Exultation, nobody may read your book, ergo, you will have no readers. Humph! I must nib my pen again. Cooks, grocers, butchers, kitchenmaids, the roast! Let brighter visions rise: methink I see it grace every room Peckwater round: methink I see, wherever mighty Tom sonorous peals forth his solemn “Come, come, come!” the sons of Oxon fly to Tallboys’ store, or Parker’s shelves, and cry “the Book, the Book!” Methink I see in Granta’s streets a crowd for Deighton’s and for Stevenson’s—anon, “the Book, the Book,” they cry “Give us the Book!” “Quips, Quirks, and Anecdotes?” “Aye, that’s the Book!” And, then, methink I see on Camus’ side, or where the Isis by her Christ Church glides, or Charwell’s lowlier stream, methink I see (as did the Spanish Prince of yore a son of Salamanca beat his brow) some togaed son of Alma Mater beat, aye, laugh and beat his brow. And then, like Philip, I demand the cause? And then he laughs outright, and in my face he thrusts a book, and cries, “Sir, read, read, read, ha, ha, ha, ha!” and stamps and laughs the while;—and then, ye gods, it proves to be the Book,—Quips, Quirks, and Anecdotes—ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I cry you mercy, Sirs, read, read, read, read! From Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and West, come orders thick as Autumn leaves e’er fell, as larks at Dunstable, or Egypt’s plagues. The Row is in commotion,—all the world rushes by Amen Corner, or St. Paul’s: how like a summer-hive they go and come: the very Chapter’s caught the stirring theme, and, like King James at Christ Church, scents a hum.[1] E’en Caxton’s ghost stalks forth to beg a tome, and Wynkyn’s shroud in vain protests his claims. “There’s not a copy left,” cries Whitt’s or Long’s, as Caxton bolts with the extremest tome, and Wynkyn, foiled, shrinks grimly into air,

Veil’d in a cloud of scarce black-letter lore.

Had Galen’s self, sirs, ab origine, or Æsculapius, or the modern school of Pharmacopœians drugged their patients thus, they long ago, aye, long ago, had starved; your undertakers had been gone extinct, and churchyards turned to gambol-greens, forsooth. Mirth, like good wine, no help from physic needs:—blue devils and ennui! ha, ha, ha, ha! Didst ever taste champagne? Then laugh, sirs, laugh,—“laugh and grow fat,” the maxim’s old and good: the stars sang at their birth—“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” I cry you mercy, sirs, the Book, the Book, Quips, Quirks, and Anecdotes. Oxonians hear! “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” Let Granta, too, respond. What would you more? the Book, sirs, read, read, read.

’Tis true, my work’s a diamond in the rough, and that there still are sparkling bits abroad, by wits whose wages may not be to die, would make it, aye, the very Book of Books! Let them, anon, to Cornhill wend their way (p.p.) to cut a figure in Ed. sec. 3d, or 4th, from Isis or from Cam. What if they say, as Maudlin Cole of Boyle, because some Christ-Church wits adorned his page with their chaste learning, “’Tis a Chedder cheese made of the milk of all the parish,”—Sirs, d’ye think I’d wince and call them knave or fool? Methink I’d joy to spur them to the task! Methink I see the mirth-inspired sons of Christ-Church and the rest, penning Rich Puns, Bon-mots, and Brave Conceits, for ages have, at Oxon, “borne the bell,” and oft the table set in royal roar. Methink I see the wits of Camus, too, go laughing to the task,—and then, methink, O! what a glorious toil were mine, at last, to send them trumpet-tongued through all the world!

[1] Sir Isaac Wake says in his Rex Platonicus, that when James the First attended the performance of a play in the Hall of Christ-Church, Oxford, the scholars applauded his Majesty by clapping their hands and humming. The latter somewhat surprised the royal auditor, but on its being explained to signify applause, he expressed himself satisfied.

CONTENTS.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

NUTS TO CRACK;

OR,

QUIPS, QUIRKS, ANECDOTE AND FACETE.

WAS OXFORD OR CAMBRIDGE FIRST FOUNDED?

“Oxford must from all antiquity have been either somewhere or nowhere. Where was it in the time of Tarquinius Priscus? If it was nowhere, it surely must have been somewhere. Where was it?”—Facetiæ Cant.

Here is a conundrum to unravel, or a nut to crack, compared to which the Dædalean Labyrinth was a farce. After so many of the learned have failed to extract the kernel, though by no means deficient in what Gall and Spurzheim would call jawitiveness (as their writings will sufficiently show,) I should approach it with “fear and trembling,” did I not remember the encouraging reproof of “Queen Bess” to Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Fain would I climb but that I fear to fall”—so dentals to the task, come what may. A new light has been thrown upon the subject of late, in an unpublished “Righte Merrie Comedie,” entitled “Trinity College, Cambridge,” from which I extract the following

JEU DE POESIE.

When first our Alma Mater rose,
Though we must laud her and love her,
Nobody cares, and nobody knows,
And nobody can discover:
Some say a Spaniard, one Cantaber,
Christen’d her, or gave birth to her,
Or his daughter—that’s likelier, more, by far,
Though some honour king Brute above her.
Pythagoras, beans-consuming dog,
(’Tis the tongue of tradition that speaks,)
Built her a lecture-room fit for a hog,[2]
Where now they store cabbage and leeks:
And there mathematics he taught us, they say,
Till catching a cold on a dull rainy day,
He packed up his tomes, and he ran away
To the land of his fathers, the Greeks.
But our Alma Mater still can boast,
Although the old Grecian would go,
Of glorious names a mighty host,
You’ll find in Wood, Fuller and Coe:
Of whom I will mention but just a few—
Bacon, and Newton, and Milton will do:
There are thousands more, I assure you,
Whose honours encircle her brow.
Then long may our Alma Mater reign,
Of learning and science the star,
Whether she were from Greece or Spain,
Or had a king Brute for her Pa;
And with Oxon, her sister, for aye preside,
For it never was yet by man denied,
That the world can’t show the like beside,—
Let echo repeat it afar!

[2] The School of Pythagoras is an ancient building, situated behind St. John’s College, Cambridge, wherein the old Grecian, says tradition, lectured before Cambridge became a university. Whether those who say so lie under a mistake, as Tom Hood would say, I am not now going to inquire. At any rate, “sic transit,” the building is now a barn or storehouse for garden stuff. Those who would be further acquainted with this relique of by-gone days, may read a very interesting account of it extant in the Library of the British Museum, illustrated with engravings, and written by a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, to which society, says Wilson, in his Memorabilia Catabrigiæ, “it was given by Edward IV., who took it from King’s College, Cambridge. It is falsely supposed to have been one of the places where the Croyland Monks read lectures.”

It matters little whether we sons of Alma Mater sprung from the loins of Pythagoras, Cantaber, or the kings Brute and Alfred. They were all respectable in their way, so that we need not blush, “proh pudor,” to own their paternity. But let us hear what the cutting writer of Terræ Filius has to say on the subject. “Grievous and terrible has been the squabble, amongst our chronologers and genealogists concerning

THE PRECEDENCE OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

What deluges of Christian ink have been shed on both sides in this weighty controversy, to prove which is the elder of the two learned and most ingenious ladies? It is wonderful to see that they should always be making themselves older than they really are; so contrary to most of their sex, who love to conceal their wrinkles and gray hairs as much as they can; whereas these two aged matrons are always quarrelling for seniority, and employing counsel to plead their causes for ’em. These are Old Nick Cantalupe and Caius on one side, and Bryan Twynne and Tony Wood on the other, who, with equal learning, deep penetration, and acuteness, have traced their ages back, God knows how far: one was born just after the siege of Troy, and the other several hundred years before Christ; since which time they have gone by as many names as the pretty little bantling at Rome, or the woman that was hanged t’other day in England, for having twenty-three husbands. Oxford, say they, was the daughter of Mempricius, an old British King, who called her from his own name, Caer Memprick, alias Greeklade, alias Leechlade, alias Rhidycen, alias Bellositum, alias Oxenforde, alias Oxford, as all great men’s children have several names. So was Cambridge, say others, the daughter of one Cantaber, a Spanish rebel and fugitive, who called her Caergrant, alias Cantabridge, alias Cambridge. But, that I may not affront either of these old ladies,” adds this facetious but sarcastic writer, “I will not take it upon me to decide which of the two hath most wrinkles * * * *. Who knows but they may be twins.”

Another authority, the author of the History of Cambridge, published by Ackermann, in 1815, says that

THIS CELEBRATED CONTROVERSY

Had its origin in 1564, when Queen Elizabeth visited the University of Cambridge, and “the Public Orator, addressing Her Majesty, embraced the opportunity of extolling the antiquity of the University to which he belonged above that of Oxford. This occasioned Thomas Key, Master of University, College, Oxford, to compose a small treatise on the antiquity of his own University, which he referred to the fabulous period when the Greek professors accompanied Brute to England; and to the less ambiguous era of 870, when Science was invited to the banks of the Isis, under the auspices of the great Alfred. A MS. copy of this production of Thomas Key accidentally came into the hands of the Earl of Leicester, from whom it passed into those of Dr. John Caius (master and founder of Gonvile and Caius Colleges, Cambridge,) who, resolving not to be vanquished in asserting the chronological claims of his own University, undertook to prove the foundation of Cambridge by Cantaber, nearly four hundred years before the Christian era. He thus assigned the birth of Cambridge to more than 1200 anterior to that which had been secondarily ascribed to Oxford by the champion of that seat of learning; and yet it can be hardly maintained that he had the best of the argument, since the primary foundation by the son of Æneas, it is evident, remains unimpeached, and the name of Brute, to say the least of it, is quite as creditable as that of Cantaber. The work which Dr. John Caius published, though under a feigned name, along with that which it was written to refute, was entitled, ‘De Antiquitate Catabrigiensis Academiæ, libri ii. in quorum 2do. de Oxoniensis quoque gymnasii antiquitate disseritur, et Cantabrigiense longe eo antiquius esse definitur, Londinense Authore: adjunximus assertionem antiquitatis Oxoniensis Academiæ ab Oxoniensi quodam annis jam elapsis duobus ad reginam conscriptam in qua docere conatur, Oxoniense gymnasium Cantabrigiensi antiquius esse: ut ex collatione facile intelligas, utra sit antequior. Excusum Londini, A. D. 1568, Mense Augusto, per Henricum Bynnenum, 12mo.’” and is extant in the British Museum. As may well be supposed by those who are acquainted with the progress of literary warfare, this work of Dr. John Caius drew from his namesake, Thomas Caius, a vindication of that which it was intended to refute; and this work he entitled “Thomæ Caii Vindiciæ Antiquitatis Academiæ Oxoniensis contra Joannem Caium Cantabrigiensem.” These two singular productions were subsequently published together by Hearne, the Oxford antiquary, who, with a prejudice natural enough, boasts that the forcible logic of the Oxford advocate “broke the heart and precipitated the death of his Cambridge antagonist.” In other words, Dr. John Caius, it is said,

DIED OF LITERARY MORTIFICATION,

On learning that his Oxford opponent had prepared a new edition of his work, to be published after his death, in which he was told were some arguments thought to bear hard on his own. “But this appears to have as little foundation as other stories of the kind,” says the editor of the History just quoted; “since it is not probable that Dr. John Caius ever saw the strictures which are said to have occasioned his death: for, as Thomas Caius died in 1572, they remained in MS. till they were published by Hearne in 1730;”—a conclusion, however, to which our learned historian seems to have jumped rather hastily, as it was just as possible that a MS. copy reached Dr. John Caius in the second as in the first case; and it is natural to suppose that the Oxford champion would desire it should be so. As a specimen of the manner in which such controversies are conducted, I conclude with the brief notice, that Tony Wood, as the author of Terræ-Fillius calls him, has largely treated of the subject in his Annals of Oxford, where he states, that

SIR SIMON D’EWES,

When compiling his work on the antiquity of the University of Cambridge, “thought he should be able to set abroad a new matter, that was never heard of before, for the advancement of his own town and University of Cambridge above Oxford;” but “hath done very little or nothing else but renewed the old Crambe, and taken up Dr. Cay’s old song, running with him in his opinions and tenets, whom he before condemning of dotage, makes himself by consequence a dotard.” According to Sir Simon, “Valence College (i. e. Pembroke Hall) was the first endowed college in England;” “his avouching which,” says Wood, “is of no force;” and he, as might be expected, puts in a claim for his own college (Merton, of Oxford,) “which,” he adds, “Sir Simon might have easily known, had he been conversant with histories, was the oldest foundation in either University.” Therefore, “if the antiquity of Cambridge depends upon Valence College (or rather, upon Peter House,) and that house upon this distich, which stood for a public inscription in the parlour window thereof, it signifies nothing:—

“Qua præit Oxoniam Cancestria longa vetustas
Primatus a Petri dicitur orsa Domo.”

He finally overwhelms his opponent by adding, that Oxford became a public University in 1264, and that a bull for the purpose was obtained the previous year, Cambridge then “being but an obscure place of learning, if any at all.” Thus I have cracked Nut the First. Those who would add “sweets to the sweets” may find them in abundance in the writers I have named already; and the subject is treated of very learnedly by Dyer, in his Dedication to his “Privileges of the University of Cambridge.”

GONE TO JERUSALEM.

A learned living oriental scholar, and a senior fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who thinks less of journeying to Shiraz, Timbuctoo, or the Holy Land, than a Cockney would of a trip to Greenwich Fair or Bagnigge Wells, kept in the same court, in College, with a late tutor, now the amiable rector of Staple——t, in Kent. It was their daily practice, when in residence, to take a ramble together, by the footpaths, round by Granchester, and back to College by Trumpington, or to Madingley, or the Hills, but more commonly the former; all delightful in their way, and well known to gownsmen for various associations. To one of these our College dons daily wended their way cogitating, for they never talked, it is said, over the omnia magna of Cambridge life. Their invariable practice was to keep moving at a stiff pace, some four or five yards in advance of each other. Our amiable tutor went one forenoon to call on Mr. P. before starting, as usual, and found his door sported. This staggered him a little. Mr. P.’s bed-maker chanced to come up at the instant. “Where is Mr. P.?” was his query. “Gone out, sir,” was the reply. “Gone out!” exclaimed Mr. H.; “Where to?” “To Jerusalem,” she rejoined. And to Jerusalem he was gone, sure enough; a circumstance of so little import in his eyes, who had seen most parts of the ancient world already, and filled the office of tutor to an Infanta of Spain, that he did not think it matter worth the notice of his College Chum. Other travellers, “vox et ratio,” as Horace says, would have had the circumstance bruited in every periodical in Christendom, “quinque sequuntur te pueri.”

A CUTTING RETORT

Is attributed to the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, when a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he is said to have studied hard, and rose daily, in the depth of winter, at four or five. He one day met a drunken fellow in the streets of Cambridge, who refused him the wall, observing, “I never give the wall to a rascal.” “I do,” retorted his Lordship, moving out of the way. It was probably this incident that gave rise to the couplet—

“Base man to take the wall I ne’er permit.”
The scholar said, “I do;” and gave him it.

LIBERTY A PLANT.

“Qui teneros CAULES alieni fregerit horti.”—Hor.

During the progress of a political meeting held in the town of Cambridge, it so happened that the late Dr. Mansel, then Public Orator of the University of Cambridge, but afterwards Master of Trinity College and Bishop of Bristol, came to the place of meeting just as Musgrave, the well known political tailor of his day, was in the midst of a most pathetic oration, and emphatically repeating, “Liberty, liberty, gentlemen—” He paused,—“Liberty is a plant—” “So is a cabbage!” exclaimed the caustic Mansel, before Musgrave had time to complete his sentence, with so happy an allusion to the trade of the tailor, that he was silenced amidst roars of laughter. Another instance of—

A TAILOR BEING TAKEN BY SURPRISE,

But by an Oxonian, a learned member of Christ Church, is recorded in the fact, that having, for near half a century, been accustomed to walk with a favourite stick, the ferule of which, at the bottom, came off, he took it to his tailor to have it repaired.

REASONS FOR NOT PUBLISHING.

The famous antiquary, Thomas Baker, B.D. of St. John’s College, Cambridge, of which he was long Socius Ejectus, lays it down as a principle, in his admirable Reflections on Learning, “that if we had fewer books, we should have more learning.” It is singular that he never published but the one book named, though he has left behind him forty-two volumes of manuscripts, the greater part in the Harleian Collection, in the British Museum, principally relating to Cambridge, and all neatly written in his own hand.

DECLINING KING GEORGE.

When “honest Vere” Foster, as he is called by “mild William,” his contemporary at College, and the grandfather of our celebrated traveller, Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke, was a student at Cambridge, where he was celebrated for his wit and humour, and for being a good scholar, St. John’s being looked upon as a Tory college, a young fellow, a student, reputed a Whig, was appointed to deliver an oration in the College Hall, on the 5th of November. This he did; but having, for some time, dwelt on the double deliverance of that day, in his peroration, he passed from King William to King George, on whom he bestowed great encomiums. When the speech was over, honest Vere and the orator being at table together, the former addressed the latter with, “I did not imagine, sir, that you would decline King George in your speech.” “Decline!” said the astonished orator; “what do you mean? I spoke very largely and handsomely of him.” “That is what I mean, too, sir,” said Vere: “for you had him in every case and termination: Georgius—Georgii—Georgio—Georgium—O Georgi!”

Another of “honest Vere’s”

CLASSICAL JEU D’ESPRIT

Is deserving a place in our treasury. He one day asked his learned college contemporary, Dr. John Taylor, editor of Demosthenes, “why he talked of selling his horse?” “Because,” replied the doctor, “I cannot afford to keep him in these hard times.” “You should keep a mare,” rejoined Foster, “according to Horace—

‘Æquam memento rebus in arduis
Servare.’”

A TRAIT OF BARROW.

Soon after that great, good, and loyal son of Granta, Dr. Isaac Barrow, was made a prebend of Salisbury, says Dr. Pope, “I overheard him say, ‘I wish I had five hundred pounds.’ ‘That’s a large sum for a philosopher,’ observed Dr. Pope; ‘what would you do with so much?’ ‘I would,’ said he, ‘give it to my sister for a portion, that would procure her a good husband.’ A few months after,” adds his memorialist, “he was made happy by receiving the above sum,” which he so much desired, “for putting a new life into the corps of his new prebend.”

INVETERATE SMOKERS.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have been famous for inveterate smokers. Amongst them was the learned Dr. Isaac Barrow, who said “it helped his thinking.” His illustrious pupil, Newton, was scarcely less addicted to the “Indian weed,” and every body has heard of his hapless courtship, when, in a moment of forgetfulness, he popped the lady’s finger into his burning pipe, instead of popping the question, and was so chagrined, that he never could be persuaded to press the matter further. Dr. Parr was allowed his pipe when he dined with the first gentleman in Europe, George the Fourth, and when refused the same indulgence by a lady at whose house he was staying, he told her, “she was the greatest tobacco-stopper he had ever met with.” The celebrated Dr. Farmer, of black-letter memory, preferred the comforts of the parlour of Emmanuel College, of which he was master, and a “yard of clay” (there were no hookahs in his day,) to a bishopric, which dignity he twice refused, when offered to him by Mr. Pitt. Another learned

LOVER OF TOBACCO,

And eke of wit, mirth, puns, and pleasantry, was the famous Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, the never-to-be-forgotten composer of the good old catch—

“Hark, the merry Christ-Church bells,”

and of another to be sung by four men smoking their pipes, which is not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear. His pipe was his breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a student of Christ Church, at 10 o’clock one night, finding it difficult to persuade a “freshman” of the fact, laid him

A WAGER,

That the Dean was at that instant smoking. Away he hurried to the deanery to decide the controversy, and on gaining admission, apologised for his intrusion by relating the occasion of it. “Well,” replied the Dean, in perfect good humour, with his pipe in his hand, “you see you have lost your wager: for I am not smoking, but filling my pipe.”

GAME IN EVERY BUSH.

Bishop Watson says, in his valuable Chemical Essays, that “Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Bentley met accidentally in London, and on Sir Isaac’s inquiring what philosophical pursuits were carrying on at Cambridge, the doctor replied, “None; for when you are a-hunting, Sir Isaac, you kill all the game; you have left us nothing to pursue.” “Not so,” said the philosopher, “you may start a variety of game in every bush, if you will but take the trouble to beat it.” “And so in truth it is,” adds Dr. W.; “every object in nature affords occasion for philosophical experiment.”

NEWTON’S TOAST.

The Editor of the Literary Panorama, says Corneille Le Bruyer, the famous Dutch painter, relates, that “happening one day to dine at the table of Newton, with other foreigners, when the dessert was sent up, Newton proposed, ‘a health to the men of every country who believed in a God;’ which,” says the editor, “was drinking the health of the whole human race.” Equal to this was

THE PIETY OF RAY,

The celebrated naturalist and divine, who (when ejected from his fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge, for non-conformity, and, for the same reason, being no longer at liberty to exercise his clerical functions as a preacher of the Gospel,) turned to the pursuit of the sciences of natural philosophy and botany for consolation. “Because I could no longer serve God in the church,” said this great and good man (in his Preface to the Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation,) “I thought myself more bound to do it by my writings.”

THE DEVIL LOOKING OVER LINCOLN.

Is a tradition of many ages’ standing, but the origin of the celebrated statue of his Satanic Majesty, which of erst overlooked Lincoln College, Oxford, is not so certain as that the effigy was popular, and gave rise to the saying. After outstanding centuries of hot and cold, jibes and jeers, “cum multis aliis,” to which stone, as well as flesh, is heir, it was taken down on the 15th of November, 1731, says a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, having lost its head in a storm about two years previously, at the same time the head was blown off the statue of King Charles the First, which overlooked Whitehall.

RADCLIFFE’S LIBRARY.

Tom Warton relates, in his somewhat rambling Life of Dr. Ralph Bathurst, President of Trinity College, Oxford, that Dr. Radcliffe was a student of Lincoln College when Dr. B. presided over Trinity; but notwithstanding their difference of age and distance of situation, the President used to visit the young student at Lincoln College “merely for the smartness of his conversation.” During one of these morning or evening calls, Dr. B. observing the embryo physician had but few books in his chambers, asked him “Where was his study?” upon which young Radcliffe replied, pointing to a few books, a skeleton, and a herbal, “This, Sir, is Radcliffe’s library.” Tom adds the following

TRAITS OF DR. BATHURST’S WIT AND HABITS.

When the Doctor was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, a captain of a company, who had fought bravely in the cause of his royal master, King Charles the First, being recommended to him for the degree of D.C.L., the doctor told the son of Mars he could not confer the degree, “but he would apply to his majesty to give him a regiment of horse!”

HE FREQUENTLY CARRIED A WHIP IN HIS HAND,

An instrument of correction not entirely laid aside in our universities in his time; but (says Tom) he only “delighted to surprise scholars, when walking in the grove at unseasonable hours. This he practised,” adds Warton, “on account of the pleasure he took in giving so odd an alarm, rather than from any principle of reproving, or intention of applying so illiberal a punishment.” One thing is certain, that in the statutes of Trinity College, Oxford (as late as 1556,) scholars of the foundation are ordered to be

WHIPPED EVEN TO THE TWENTIETH YEAR.

“Dr. Potter,” says Aubery, while a tutor of the above college, “whipped his pupil with his sword by his side, when he came to take his leave of him to go to the Inns of Court.” This was done to make him a smart fellow. “In Sir John Fane’s collection of letters of the Paston family, written temp. Henry VI.,” says the author of the Gradus ad Catabrigiam, “we find one of the gentle sex prescribing for her son, who was at Cambridge,” no doubt with a maternal anxiety that he should

BE A SMART FELLOW,

as follows:—“Prey Grenefield to send me faithfully worde by wrytyn, who (how) Clemit Paston hathe do his dever i’ lernying, and if he hath nought do well, nor will nought amend, prey hym that he wyll truely BELASH hym tyl he wyll amend, and so dyd the last mastyr, and the best eu’ he had at Cambridge.” And that Master Grenefield might not want due encouragement, she concludes with promising him “X m’rs,” for his pains. We do not, however, learn how many marks young Master Clemit received, who certainly took more pains.—Patiendo non faciendo—Ferendo non feriendo.

MILTON WAS BELASHED

over the buttery-hatch of Christ-College, Cambridge, and, as Dr. Johnson insinuates in his Life, was the last Cambridge student so castigated in either university. The officer who performed this fundamental operation was Dr. Thomas Bainbrigge, the master of Christ’s College. But as it was at a later date that Dr. Ralph Bathurst carried his whip, according to our friend Tom’s showing, to surprise the scholars, it is therefore going a great length to give our “Prince of Poets” the sole merit of being the last smart fellow that issued from the halls of either Oxford or Cambridge, handsome as he was.

The following celebrated

EPIGRAM ON AN EPIGRAM,

Printed, says the Oxford Sausage, “from the original MSS. preserved in the ARCHIVES of the Jelly-bag Society,” is somewhere said to have been written by Dr. Ralph Bathurst, when an Oxford scholar:—

One day in Christ-church meadows walking,
Of poetry and such things talking,
Says Ralph, a merry wag,
An EPIGRAM, if right and good,
In all its circumstances should
Be like a JELLY-BAG.
Your simile, I own, is new,
But how dost make it out? quoth Hugh.
Quoth Ralph, I’ll tell you, friend:
Make it at top both wide and fit
To hold a budget full of wit,
And point it at the end.

TELL US WHAT YOU CAN’T DO?

A party of Oxford scholars were one evening carousing at the Star Inn, when a waggish student, a stranger to them, abruptly introduced himself, and seeing he was not “one of us,” they all began to quiz him. This put him upon his mettle, and besides boasting of other accomplishments, he told them, in plain terms, that he could write Greek or Latin Verses better, and was, in short, an over-match for them at any thing. Upon this, one of the party exclaimed, “You have told us a great deal of what you can do, tell us something you can’t do?” “Well,” he retorted, “I’ll tell you what I can’t do—I can’t pay my reckoning!” This sally won him a hearty welcome.

THE FIRST WOMEN INTRODUCED INTO A CLOISTER.

About 1550, whilst the famous Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, was Dean of Christ-church, Oxford, says Cole, in his Athenæ Cant., “he brought his wife into the college, who, with the wife of Peter Martyr, a canon of the same cathedral, were observed to be the first women ever introduced into a cloister or college, and, upon that account, gave no small scandal at the time.” This reminds me of an anecdote that used to amuse the under-grads in my day at Cambridge. A certain D.D., head of a college, a bachelor, and in his habits retired to a degree of solitariness, in an unlucky moment gave a lady that did not want twice bidding, not bill of exchange, but a running invitation to the college lodge, to be used at pleasure. She luckily seized the long vacation for making her appearance, when there were but few students in residence; but to the confusion of our D.D., her ten daughters came en traine, and the college was not a little scandalized by their playing shuttlecock in the open court—the lady was in no haste to go. Report says sundry hints were given in vain. She took his original invite in its literal sense, to “suit her own convenience.” The anxiety he endured threw our modest D.D. in to a sick-bed, and not relishing the office of nurse to a bachelor of sixty years’ standing, she decamped, + her ten daughters.

THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOLAR AND THE GHOST OF A
SCRAG OF MUTTON.

In the days that are past, by the side of a stream,
Where waters but softly were flowing,
With ivy o’ergrown an old mansion-house stood,
That was built on the skirts of a chilling damp wood,
Where the yew-tree and cypress were growing.
The villagers shook as they passed by the doors,
When they rested at eve from their labours;
And the traveller many a furlong went round,
If his ears once admitted the terrific sound,
Of the tale that was told by the neighbours.
They said, “that the house in the skirts of the wood
By a saucer-eyed ghost was infested,
Who filled every heart with confusion and fright,
By assuming strange shapes at the dead of the night,
Shapes monstrous, and foul, and detested.”
And truly they said, and the monster well knew,
That the ghost was the greatest of evils;
For no sooner the bell of the mansion toll’d one,
Than the frolicksome imp in a fury begun
To caper like ten thousand devils.
He appeared in forms the most strange and uncouth,
Sure never was goblin so daring!
He utter’d loud shrieks and most horrible cries,
Curst his body and bones, and his sweet little eyes,
Till his impudence grew beyond bearing.
Just at this nick o’ time, when the master’s sad heart
With anguish and sorrow was swelling,
He heard that a scholar with science complete,
Full of magical lore as an egg’s full of meat,
At Cambridge had taken a dwelling.
The scholar was versed in all magical arts,
Most famous was he throughout college;
To the Red Sea full oft many an unquiet ghost,
To repose with King Pharaoh and his mighty host
He had sent through his powerful knowledge.
To this scholar so learn’d the master he went,
And as lowly he bent with submission,
Told the freaks of the horrible frights
That prevented his household from resting at nights,
And offered this humble petition:—
“That he, the said scholar, in wisdom so wise,
Would the mischievous fiend lay in fetters;
Would send him in torments for ever to dwell,
In the nethermost pit of the nethermost hell,
For destroying the sleep of his betters.”
The scholar so versed in all magical lore,
Told the master his pray’r should be granted;
He ordered his horse to be saddled with speed,
And perch’d on the back of his cream colour’d steed,
Trotted off to the house that was haunted.
“Bring me turnips and milk!” the scholar he cried,
In voice like the echoing thunder:
He brought him some turnips and suet beside,
Some milk and a spoon, and his motions they eyed,
Quite lost in conjecture and wonder.
He took up the turnips, and peel’d off the skins,
Put them into a pot that was boiling;
Spread a table and cloth, and made ready to sup,
Then call’d for a fork, and the turnips fished up
In a hurry, for they were a-spoiling.
He mash’d up the turnips with butter and milk:
The hail at the casement ’gan clatter!
Yet this scholar ne’er heeded the tempest without,
But raising his eyes, and turning about,
Asked the maid for a small wooden platter.
He mash’d up the turnips with butter and salt,
The storm came on thicker and faster—
The lightnings went flash, and with terrific din
The wind at each crevice and cranny came in,
Tearing up by the root lath and plaster.
He mash’d up the turnips with nutmegs and spice,
The mess would have ravish’d a glutton;
When lo! with sharp bones hardly covered with skin,
The ghost from a nook o’er the window peep’d in,
In the form of a boil’d scrag of mutton.
“Ho! Ho!” said the ghost, “what art doing below?”
The scholar peep’d up in a twinkling—
“The times are too hard to afford any meat,
So to render my turnips more pleasant to eat,
A few grains of pepper I’m sprinkling.”

Then he caught up a fork, and the mutton he seiz’d,
And soused it at once in the platter;
Threw o’er it some salt and a spoonful of fat,
And before the poor ghost could tell what he was at,
He was gone like a mouse down the throat of a cat,
And this is the whole of the matter.

COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS.

Doctor John Franklin, Fellow and Master of Sidney College, Cambridge, 1730, “a very fat, rosy-complexioned man,” dying soon after he was made Dean of Ely, and being succeeded by Dr. Ellis, “a meagre, weasel-faced, swarthy, black man,” the Fenman of Ely, says (Cole) in allusion thereto, out of vexation at being so soon called upon for recognition money, made the following humorous distitch:—

“The Devil took our Dean,
And pick’d his bones clean;
Then clapt him on a board,
And sent him back again.”

JAUNT DOWN A PATIENT’S THROAT.

“Two of a trade can ne’er agree,
No proverb e’er was juster;
They’ve ta’en down Bishop Blaize, d’ye see,
And put up Bishop Bluster.”

Dr. Mansel, on Bishop Watson’s head becoming
a signboard, in Cambridge, in lieu of the
ancient one of Bishop Blaize.—Facetiæ
Cant., p. 7.

Sir Isaac Pennington and Sir Busick Harwood were cotemporary at Cambridge. The first as Regius Professor of Physic and Senior Fellow of St. John’s College, the other was Professor of Anatomy and Fellow of Downing College. Both were eminent in their way, but seldom agreed, and held each other’s abilities pretty cheap, some say in sovereign contempt. Sir Busick was once called in by the friends of a patient that had been under Sir Isaac’s care, but had obtained small relief, anxious to hear his opinion of the malady. Not approving of the treatment pursued, he inquired “who was the physician in attendance,” and on being told, exclaimed—“He! If he were to descend into a patient’s stomach with a candle and lantern, he would not have been able to name the complaint!”

THIS DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Was hit off, it is supposed, not by Dean Swift or wicked Will Whiston, but by Bishop Mansel, as follows:—

Sir Isaac,
Sir Busick;
Sir Busick,
Sir Isaac;
’Twould make you and I sick
To taste their physick.

Another, perhaps the same Cambridge wag, penned the following quaternion on Sir Isaac, which appeared under the title of

AN EPIGRAM ON A PETIT-MAITRE PHYSICIAN.

When Pennington for female ills indites,
Studying alone not what, but how he writes,
The ladies, as his graceful form they scan,
Cry, with ill-omen’d rapture, “killing man!”

But Sir Isaac, too, was a wit, and chanced on a time to be one of a Cambridge party, amongst whom was a rich old fellow, an invalid, who was too mean to buy an opinion on his case, and thought it a good opportunity to worm one out of Sir Isaac gratis. He accordingly seized the opportunity for reciting the whole catalogue of his ills, ending with, “what would you advise me to take, my dear Sir Isaac?” “I should recommend you to take advice,” was the reply.

PORSON,

Whose very name conjures up the spirits of ten thousand wits, holding both sides, over a copus of Trinity ale and a classical pun, would not only frequently “steal a few hours from the night,” but see out both lights and liquids, and seem none the worse for the carouse. He had one night risen for the purpose of reaching his hat from a peg to depart, after having finished the port, sherry, gin-store, &c., when he espied a can of beer, says Dyer, (surely it must have been audit,) in a corner. Restoring his hat to its resting place, he reseated himself with the following happy travestie of the old nursery lines—

“When wine is gone, and ale is spent,
Then small beer is most excellent.”

It was no uncommon thing for his gyp to enter his room with Phœbus, and find him still en robe, with no other companions but a Homer, Æschylus, Plato, and a dozen or two other old Grecians surrounding an empty bottle, or what his late Royal Highness the Duke of York would have styled “a marine,” id est “a good fellow, who had done his duty, and was ready to do it again.” Upon his gyp once peeping in before day light, and finding him still up, Porson answered his “quod petis?” (whether he wanted candles or liquor,) with

ου τοδε ουδ’ αλλο.

Scotticè—neither Toddy nor Tallow.

At another time, when asked what he would drink? he replied?—“aliquid” (a liquid.)

He was once

BOASTING AT A CAMBRIDGE PARTY,

That he could pun upon anything, when he was challenged to do so upon the Latin Gerunds, and exclaimed, after a pause—

“When Dido found Æneas would not come.
She mourned in silence, and was Di-do-dum(b).”

BISHOP HEBER’S COLLEGE PUNS.

The late amiable, learned, and pious Bishop Heber was not above a pun in his day, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson’s anathema, that a man who made a pun would pick a pocket. Among the jeux des mots attributed to him are the following: he was one day dining with an Oxford party, comprises the élite of his day, and when the servant was in the act of removing the table-cloth from off the green table-covering, at the end of their meal, he exclaimed, in the words of Horace—

“Diffugere nives: redeunt jam gramina campis.”

At another time he made one of a party of Oxonians, amongst whom was a gentleman of great rotundity of person, on which account he had acquired the soubriquet of ‘heavy-a—se;’ and he was withal of very somniferous habits, frequently dozing in the midst of a conversation that would have made the very glasses tingle with delight. He had fallen fast asleep during the time a mirth-moving subject was recited by one of the party, but woke up just at the close, when all save himself were “shaking fat sides,” and on his begging to know the subject of their laughter, Heber let fly at him in pure Horatian—

“Exsomnis stupet Evias.”

The mirth-loving Dr. Barnard, late Provost of Eton, was cotemporary, at Cambridge, with

A WORTHY OF THE SAME SCHOOL,

Who, then a student of St. John’s College, used to frequent the same parties that Barnard did, who was of King’s. Barnard used to taunt him with his stupidity; “and,” said Judge Hardinge, who records the anecdote, “he one day half killed Barnard with laughter, who had been taunting him, as usual, with the simplicity of the following excuse and remonstrance: You are always running your rigs upon me and calling me ‘stupid fellow;’ and it is very cruel, now, that’s what it is; for you don’t consider that a broad-wheeled wagon went over my head when I was ten years old.” And here I must remark upon the injustice of persons reflecting upon the English Universities, as their enemies often do, because every man who succeeds in getting a degree does not turn out a Porson or a Newton. I knew one Cantab, a Caius man, to whom writing a letter to his friends was such an effort, that he used to get his medical attendant to give him an ægrotat (put him on the sick list,) and, besides,

KEEP HIS DOOR SPORTED FOR A WEEK,

till the momentous task was accomplished. And two Oxonians were of late

PLUCKED AT THEIR DIVINITY EXAMINATION,

Because one being asked, “Who was the Mediator, between God and man?” answered, “The Archbishop of Canterbury.” The other being questioned as to “why our Saviour sat on the right hand of God?” replied, “Because the Holy Ghost sat on the left.”

COMPLIMENT TO THE MEN OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXON.

“The men of Exeter College, Oxon,” says Fuller, in his Church History, “consisted chiefly of Cornish and Devonshire men, the gentry of which latter, Queen Elizabeth used to say, are courtiers by birth. And as these western men do bear away the bell for might and sleight in wrestling, so the scholars here have always acquitted themselves with credit in Palæstra literaria.”

And writing of this society reminds me that

HIS GRACE OF WELLINGTON

Is a living example of the fact, that it does not require great learning to make a great general; nor is great learning always necessary to complete the character of the head of a college. The late Rector of Exeter College, Dr. Cole, raised that society, by his prudent management, from the very reduced rank in which he found it amongst the other foundations of Oxford, to a flourishing and high reputation for good scholarship. Yet he is said one day to have complimented a student at collections, by saying, after the gentleman had construed his portion of Sophocles, “Sir, you have construed your Livy very well.” He nevertheless redeemed his credit by one day posing a student, during his divinity examination, with asking him, in vain, “What Christmas day was?” Another Don of the same college, once asking a student of the society some divinity question, which he was equally at a loss for an answer, he exclaimed—“Good God, sir, you the son of a clergyman, and not answer such a question as that?” Aristotle was of opinion that knowledge could only be acquired, but our tutor seems to have thought, like the opponents of Aristotle, that a son of a parson ought to be born to it.

ANOTHER OXONIAN WAS POSED,

Whom I knew, yet was by no means deficient in scholastic learning, and withal a great wag. He was asked, at the divinity examination, how many sacraments there were. This happened at the time that the Catholic question was in the high road to the House of Lords, under the auspices of the Duke of Wellington, and he had been cramming his upper story with abundance of Catholic Faith from the writings of Faber, Gandolphy, and the Bishops of Durham and Exeter. “How many sacraments are there, sir?” repeated the Examiner (of course referring to the Church of England.) The student paused on, and the question was repeated a second time; “Why—a—suppose—we—a—say half a dozen,” was the reply. It is needless to add he was plucked. The following

LAPSUS GRAMMATICÆ

Is attributed to a certain D.D. of Exeter, who, having undertaken to lionize one of the foreign princes of the many that accompanied the late king and the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia to Oxford, in 1814, a difficulty arose between them as to their medium of communication; the prince being ignorant of the English language, and the doctor no less so with respect to modern foreign languages. In this dilemma the latter proposed an interchange of ideas by means of the fingers, in the following unique address:—“Intelligisne colloquium cum digitalibus tuis?”

It would be somewhat awkward for certain alumni if his Grace of Wellington should issue an imperative decree, as Chancellor,

THAT THE LATIN TONGUE BE USED,

(As Wood says, in his annals, the famous Archbishop Bancroft did, on being raised to the dignity of Chancellor of Oxford in 1608,) “By the students in their halls and colleges, whereby,” said his Grace, “the young as well as the old may be inured to a ready and familiar delivery of their minds in that language, whereof there was now so much use both in studies and common conversation; for it was now observed (and so it may in these present times, adds Wood,) that it was a great blemish to the learned men of this nation, that they being complete in all good knowledge, yet they were not able promptly and aptly to express themselves in Latin, but with hesitation and circumlocution, which ariseth only from disuse.”

EFFECT OF HABIT.

Dr. Fothergill, when Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, was a singular as well as a learned man, and would not have been seen abroad minus his wig and gown for a dukedom. One night a fire broke out in the lodge, which spread with such rapidity, that it was with difficulty Mrs. F. and family escaped the fury of the flames; and this she no sooner did than, naturally enough, the question was, “Where is the Doctor?” No Doctor was to be found; and the cry was he had probably perished in the flames. All was bustle, and consternation, and tears, till suddenly, to the delight of all, he emerged from the burning pile, full-dressed, as usual, his wig something the worse for being nearly ‘done to a turn;’ but he deemed it indecorous for him to appear otherwise, though he stayed to robe at the risk of his life.

THE CONCUSSION.

The living Cambridge worthy, William Sydney Walker, M.A. (who at the age of sixteen wrote the successful tragedy of Wallace, and recently vacated his fellowship at Trinity College “for conscience-sake,”) walking hastily round the corner of a street in Cambridge, in his peculiarly near-sighted sidling hasty manner, he suddenly came in contact with the blind muffin-man who daily perambulates the town. The concussion threw both upon their haunches. “Don’t you see I’m blind?” exclaimed the muffin-man, in great wrath. “How should I,” rejoined the learned wag, “when I’m blind too.”

COMIC PICTURE OF THE ELECTION OF A PROVOST OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Upon the death of a provost of King’s College, Cambridge, the fellows are obliged, according to their statutes, to be shut up in their celebrated chapel till they have agreed upon the election of a successor, a custom not unlike that to which the cardinals are subject at Rome, upon the death of a pope, where not uncommonly some half dozen are brought out dead before an election takes place. “The following is a comic picture of an election,” says Judge Hardinge, in Nichols’s Illustrations of Literature, from the pen of Daniel Wray, Esq. dated from Cambridge, the 19th of January, 1743. “The election of a provost of King’s is over—Dr. George is the man. The fellows went into chapel on Monday, before noon in the morning, as the statute directs. After prayers and sacrament, they began to vote:—22 for George; 16 for Thackery; 10 for Chapman. Thus they continued, scrutinizing and walking about, eating and sleeping; some of them smoking. Still the same numbers for each candidate, till yesterday about noon (for they held that in the forty-eight hours allowed for the election no adjournment could be made,) when the Tories, Chapman’s friends, refusing absolutely to concur with either of the other parties, Thackery’s votes went over to George by agreement, and he was declared. A friend of mine, a curious fellow, tells me he took a survey of his brothers at two o’clock in the morning, and that never was a more curious or a more diverting spectacle: some wrapped in blankets, erect in their stalls like mummies; others asleep on cushions, like so many Gothic tombs. Here a red cap over a wig, there a face lost in the cape of a rug; one blowing a chafing-dish with a surplice-sleeve; another warming a little negus, or sipping Coke upon Littleton, i. e. tent and brandy. Thus did they combat the cold of that frosty night, which has not killed any one of them, to my infinite surprise.” One of the fellows of King’s engaged in this election was Mr. C. Pratt, afterwards Lord High Chancellor of England, and father of the present Marquis of Camden, who, writing to his amiable and learned friend and brother Etonian and Kingsman, Dr. Sneyd Davies, archdeacon of Derby, &c. in the January of the above year, says, “Dear Sneyd we are all busy in the choice of a provost. George and Thackery are the candidates. George has all the power and weight of the Court interest, but I am for Thackery, so that I am at present a patriot, and vehemently declaim against all unstatutable influence. The College are so divided, that your friends the Tories may turn the balance if they will; but, if they should either absent themselves or nominate a third man, Chapman, for example, Thackery will be discomfited. Why are not you a doctor? We could choose you against all opposition. However, I insist upon it, that you shall qualify yourself against the next vacancy, for since you will not come to London, and wear lawn sleeves, you may stay where you are, and be provost,”—which he did not live to be, though he did take his D.D.

SIR, DOMINUS, MAGISTRI, SIR GREENE.

A writer in an early volume of the Gentleman’s Magazine has stated, that “the Christian name is never used in the university with the addition of Sir, but the surname only.” Cole says, in reply, “This is certainly so at Cambridge. Yet when Bachelors of Arts get into the country, it is quite the reverse; for then, whether curates, chaplains, vicars, or rectors, they are constantly styled Sir, or Dominus, prefixed to both their names, to distinguish them from Masters of Arts, or Magistri. This may be seen,” he says, “in innumerable instances in the lists of incumbents in New Court, &c.” And, he adds, addressing himself to that illustrious character, Sylvanus Urban, “I could produce a thousand others from the wills, institutions, &c. in the diocese of Ely, throughout the whole reign of Henry VIII. and for many years after, till the title was abandoned, and are never called Sir Evans, or Sir Martext, as in the university they would be, according to your correspondent’s opinion, but invariably Sir Hugh Evans and Sir Oliver Martext, &c. The subject,” adds this pleasant chronicler, “‘seria ludo,’ puts me in mind of a very pleasant story, much talked of when I was first admitted of the university, which I know to be fact, as I since heard Mr. Greene, the dean of Salisbury, mention it. The dean was at that time only Bachelor of Arts, and Fellow of Bene’t College, where Bishop Mawson was master, and then, I think, Bishop of Llandaff, who, being one day at Court, seeing Mr. Greene come into the drawing-room, immediately accosted him, pretty loud, in this manner, How do you do, Sir Greene? When did you leave College, Sir Greene? Mr. Greene was quite astonished, and the company present much more so, as not comprehending the meaning of the salutation or title, till Mr. Greene explained it, and also informed them,” observes Cole, with his accustomed fulness of information, “of the worthy good bishop’s absences.”

HUSBANDS MAY BEAT THEIR WIVES.

Fuller relates in his Abel Redivivus, that the celebrated President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Dr. John Rainolds, the contemporary of Jewel and Usher, had a controversy with one William Gager, a student of Christ-Church, who contended for the lawfulness of stage-plays; and the same Gager, he adds, maintained, horresco referens! in a public act in the university, that “it was lawful for husbands to beat their wives.”

ANOTHER ATTACK ON THE LADIES

Is contained in Antony Wood’s “angry account” of the alterations made in Merton College, of which he was a fellow, during the wardenship of Sir Thomas Clayton, whose lady, says Wood, “did put the college to unnecessary charges and very frivolous expenses, among which were a very large looking-glass, for her to see her ugly face, and body to the middle, * * * * * which was brought in Hilary terme, 1674, and cost, as the bursar told me, above 10£.; a bedstead and bedding, worth 40£., must also be bought, because the former bedstead and bedding was too short for him (he being a tall man,) so perhaps when a short warden comes, a short bed must be bought.” There were also other

EXTRAORDINARY DOINGS AT MERTON.

When the Vandals of Parliamentary visiters, in Cromwell’s time, perpetrated their spoliations at Oxford, one of them, Sir Nathaniel Brent, says Wood, actually “took down the rich hangings at the altar of the chapel, and ornamented his bedchamber with them.”

DIGGING YOUR GRAVES WITH YOUR TEETH.

The late vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev. William Hodson, B.D., and the late Regius Professor of Hebrew, the Rev. William Collier, B.D., who had also been tutor of Trinity College, were both skilled in the science of music, and constant visiters at the quartett parties of Mr. Sharp, of Green Street, Cambridge, organist of St. John’s College. The former happened one evening to enter Mr. Sharp’s sanctum sanctorum, rather later than usual, and found the two latter just in the act of discussing a brace of roast ducks, with a bowl of punch in the background. He was pressed to join them. “No, no, gentlemen,” was his reply, “give me a glass of water and a crust. You know not what you are doing. You are digging your graves with your teeth.” Both gentlemen, however, out-lived him.

DR. TORKINGTON’S GRATITUDE TO HIS HORSE.

The late master of Clare Hall, Cambridge, Dr. Torkington, was one evening stopped by a footpad or pads, in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, when riding at an humble pace on his old Rosinante, which had borne him through many a long year. Both horse and master were startled by the awful tones in which the words, “Stand, and deliver!” were uttered, to say nothing of the flourish of a shillelah, or something worse, and an unsuccessful attempt to grab the rein. The horse, declining acquiescence, set off at a good round pace, and thus saved his master; an act for which the old doctor was so grateful, that he never suffered it to be rode again, but had it placed in a paddock, facing his lodge, on the banks of the Cam, where, with a plentiful supply of food, and his own daily attentions, it lingered out the remnant of life, and “liv’d at home at ease.”

SAY JOHN SHARP IS A ROGUE.

At the time the celebrated Archbishop Sharp was at Oxford, it was the custom in that University, as likewise in Cambridge, for students to have a chum or companion, who not only shared the sitting-room with each other, but the bed also; and a writer, speaking of the University of Cambridge, says, one of the colleges was at one period so full, that when writing a letter, the students were obliged to hold their hand over it, to prevent its contents being seen. Archbishop Sharp, when an Oxford Scholar, was awoke in the night by his chum lying by his side, who told him he had just dreamed a most extraordinary dream; which was, that he (Sharp) would be an Archbishop of York. After some time, he again awoke him, and said he had dreamt the same, and was well assured he would arrive at that dignity. Sharp, extremely angry at being thus disturbed, told him if he awoke him any more, he would send him out of bed. However, his chum, again dreaming the same, ventured to awake him; on which Sharp became much enraged; but his bed-fellow telling him, if he had again the same dream he would not annoy him any more, if he would faithfully promise him, should he ever become archbishop, to give him a good rectory, which he named. “Well, well,” said Sharp, “you silly fellow, go to sleep; and if your dream, which is very unlikely, should come true, I promise you the living.” “By that time,” said his chum, “you will have forgot me and your promise.” “No, no,” says Sharp, “that I shall not; but, if I do not remember you, and refuse you the living, then say John Sharp is a rogue.” After Dr. Sharp had been archbishop some time, his old friend (his chum) applied to him (on the said rectory being vacant,) and, after much difficulty, got admitted to his presence, having been informed by the servant, that the archbishop was particularly engaged with a gentleman relative to the same rectory for which he was going to apply. The archbishop was told there was a clergyman who was extremely importunate to see him, and would take no denial. His Grace, extremely angry, ordered him to be admitted, and requested to know why he had so rudely almost forced himself into his presence. “I come,” says he, “my Lord, to claim an old promise, the rectory of ——.” “I do not remember, sir, ever to have seen you before; how, then, could I have promised you the rectory, which I have just presented to this gentleman?” “Then,” says his old chum, “John Sharp is a rogue!” The circumstance was instantly roused in the mind of the archbishop, and the result was, he provided liberally for his dreaming chum in the Church.

“I SAID AS HOW YOU’D SEE.”

“In the year 1821,” says Parke, in his Musical Memoirs, “I occasionally dined with a pupil of mine, Mr. Knight, who had lately left college. This young man (who played the most difficult pieces on the flute admirably) and his brother Cantabs, when they met, were very fond of relating the wild tricks for which the students of the University of Cambridge are celebrated. The following relation of one will convey some idea,” he says, “of their general eccentricity:—A farmer, who resided at a considerable distance from Cambridge, but who had, nevertheless, heard of the excesses committed by the students, having particular business in the before-mentioned seat of the Muses, together with a strong aversion to entering it, took his seat on the roof of the coach, and, being engrossed with an idea of danger, said to the coachman, who was a man of few words, ‘I’ze been towld that the young gentlemen at Cambridge be wild chaps.’ ‘You’ll see,’ replied the coachman; ‘and,’ added the farmer, ‘that it be hardly safe to be among ’em.’ ‘You’ll see,’ again replied the coachman. During the journey the farmer put several other interrogatories to the coachman, which was answered, as before, with ‘You’ll see!’ When they had arrived in the High Street of Cambridge, Mr. Knight had a party of young men at his lodgings, who were sitting in the first floor, with the windows all open, and a large China bowl full of punch before them, which they had just broached. The noise made by their singing and laughing, attracting the notice and exciting the fears of the farmer, he again, addressing his taciturn friend, the coachman, (whilst passing close under the window,) said with great anxiety, ‘Are we all safe, think ye?’ when, before the master of the whip had time to utter his favourite monosyllables, ‘You’ll see,’ bang came down, on the top of the coach, bowl, punch, glasses, &c. to the amazement and terror of the farmer, who was steeped in his own favourite potation. ‘There,’ said coachee (who had escaped a wetting,) ‘I said as how you’d see!’”

I NOW LEAVE YOU TO MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS YOU PLEASE.

When Gray produced his famous Ode for the installation of his patron, the late Duke of Grafton, a production, it is observed, which would have been more admired, had it “not been surpassed by his two masterpieces, the Bard, and the Progress of Poetry,” being possessed of a very accurate taste for music, which he had formed on the Italian model, he weighed every note of the composer’s music, (the learned Cambridge professor, Dr. Randall,) with the most critical exactness, and kept the composer in attendance upon him, says Dyer, in his Supplement, for three months. Gray was, indeed, a thorough disciple of the Italian school of music, whilst the professor was an ardent admirer of the sublime compositions of Handel, whose noise, it is stated, Gray could not bear; but after the professor had implicitly followed his views till he came to the chorus, Gray exclaimed, “I have now done, and leave you to make as much noise as you please.” This fine composition is still in MS. in the hands of the Doctor’s son, Mr. Edward Randall, of the town of Cambridge.

THE MAD PETER-HOUSE POET.

Gray was not the only modern poet of deserved celebrity, which Peter-House had the honour to foster in her cloisters. A late Fellow of that Society, named Kendal, “a person of a wild and deranged state of mind,” says Dyer, but, it must be confessed, with much method in his madness, during his residence in Cambridge, “occasionally poured out, extemporaneously, the most beautiful effusions,” but the paucity of the number preserved have almost left him without a name, though meriting a niche in Fame’s temple. I therefore venture to repeat the following, with his name, that his genius may live with it:—

The town have found out different ways,
To praise its different Lears:
To Barry it gives loud huzzas,
To Garrick only tears.

He afterwards added this exquisite effusion:—

A king,—aye, every inch a king,—
Such Barry doth appear;
But Garrick’s quite another thing,
He’s every inch King Lear.

THE GRACE CUP OF PEMBROKE-HALL, CAMBRIDGE.

An ancient cup of silver gilt is preserved by this society, which was given to them by the noble foundress of their college, Lady Mary de St. Paul, daughter of Guy de Castillon, Earl of St. Paul, in France, and widow of Audomar de Valentia, Earl of Pembroke, who is said to have been killed in a tournament, held in France, in 1323, in honour of their wedding day,—an accident, says Fuller, by which she was “a maid, a wife, and a widow, in one day.” Lysons in his second volume, has given an engraved delineation of this venerable goblet; the foot of which, says Cole, in the forty-second volume of his MSS. “stands on a large circle, whose upper rim is neatly ornamented with small fleurs de lis, in open work, and looks very like an ancient coronet.” On a large rim, about the middle of the cup, is a very ancient embossed inscription; which, says the same authority, in 1773, “not a soul in the College could read, and the tradition of it was forgotten;” but he supposes it to run:—

Sayn Denis’ yt es me dere for his lof drenk and mak gud cher.

The other inscription is short, and has an M. and V. above the circle; “which,” adds Cole, “I take to mean, God help at need Mary de Valentia.” At the bottom of the inside of the cup is an embossed letter M. This he does not comprehend; but says it may possibly stand for Mementote. “Dining in Pembroke College Hall, New Year’s Day, 1773,” he adds, “the grace cup of silver gilt, the founder’s gift to her college, was produced at the close of dinner, when, being full of sweet wine, the old custom is here, as in most other colleges, for the Master, at the head of the long table, to rise, and, standing on his feet, to drink, In piam memoriam (Fundatricis,) to his neighbour on his right hand, and, who is also to be standing. When the Master has drunk, he delivers the cup to him he drank to, and sits down; and the other, having the cup, drinks to his opposite neighbour, who stands up while the other is drinking; and thus alternately till it has gone quite through the company, two always standing at a time. It is of no large capacity, and is often replenished.”

This is not unlike

THE TERTIAVIT

of the Mertonians, as they call it (says Mr. Pointer,) from a barbarous Latin word derived from Tertius, because there are always three standing at a time. The custom, he says, is a loyal one, and arises from their drinking the King and Queen’s health standing (at dinner) on some extraordinary days (called Gaudies, from the Latin word Gaudeo, to rejoice,) to show their loyalty. There are always three standing at a time the first not sitting down again till the second has drank to a third man. The same loyal custom, under different forms, prevails in all colleges in both Universities. At the Inns of Court, also, in London, the King’s health is drunk every term, on what is called Grand Day, all members present, big-wig and student, having filled “a bumper of sparkling wine,” rise simultaneously, and drink “The King,” supernaculum, of course.

A MORE CAPACIOUS BOWL

Than the foregoing is in the possession of the Society of Jesus College, Oxford, says Chalmers, the gift of the hospitable Sir Watkins Williams Wynne, grandfather to the present baronet. It will contain ten gallons, and weighs 278 ounces: how or when it is used, this deponent sayeth not. Queen’s College, Oxon, says Mr. Pointer, has its—

HORN OF DIVERSION,

So called because it never fails to afford funnery. It is kept in the buttery, is occasionally presented to persons to drink out of and is so contrived, that by lifting it up to the mouth too hastily, the air gets in and suddenly forces too great a quantity of the liquid, as if thrown into the drinker’s face, to his great surprise and the delight of the standers by. Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra.

ANOTHER BIBULOUS RELIQUE

Was the famous chalice, found in one of the hands of the founder of Merton College, Oxford, the celebrated Walter de Merton, Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of England, upon the opening of his grave in 1659, says Wood, on the authority of Mr. Leonard Yate, Fellow of Merton. It held more than a quarter of a pint; and the Warden and Fellows caused it to be sent to the College, to be put into their cista jocalium; but the Fellows, in their zeal, sometimes drinking out of it, “this, then, so valued relic was broken and destroyed.”

A LAUDABLE AND CHRISTIAN CUSTOM,

In Merton College, says Pointer, in his Oxoniensis Academia, &c. “is their meeting together in the Hall on Christmas Eve, and other solemn times, to sing a Psalm, and drink a Grace Cup to one another, (called Poculum Charitatis) wishing one another health and happiness. These Grace Cups,” he adds, “they drink to one another every day after dinner and supper, wishing one another peace and good neighbourhood.” This conclusion reminds us of the following anecdote:—

A learned Cambridge mathematician, now holding a distinguished post at the Naval College, Portsmouth, after discussing one day, with a party of Johnians, the propriety of the Dies Festæ, solar, siderial, &c., drily observed, putting a bumper to his lips, “I think we should have jovial days as well.” Every College in both Universities has the next best thing to it,—

THEIR FEAST DAYS,

“In piam memoriam” of their several founders, most of whom being persons of taste, left certain annual sums wherewith to “pay the piper.” Besides minor feast-days, every Society, both at Oxford and Cambridge, hold its yearly commemoration. There is always prayers and a sermon on this day, and the Lesson is taken from Eccl. xliv. “Let us now praise famous men,” &c. Mr. Pointer says, that at Magdalen College, Oxford, it is “a custom on all commemoration days to have the bells rung in a confused manner, and without any order, it being the primitive way of ringing.” The same writer states that there is

A MUSICAL MAY-DAY COMMEMORATION,

Annually celebrated by this Society, which consists of a concert of music on the top of the Tower, in honour of its founder, Henry VII. It was originally a mass, but since the Reformation, it has been “a merry concert of both vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry ketches, and lasts almost two hours (beginning as early as four o’clock in the morning,) and is concluded with ringing the bells.” The performers have a breakfast for their pains. They have likewise singing early on Christmas morning. The custom is similar to one observed at Manheim, in Germany, and throughout the palatinate.

Whoever was the author of the following admirable production, he was certainly not νους-less, and it will “hardly be read with dry lips, or mouths that do not water,” says the author of the Gradus ad Cant.

ODE ON A COLLEGE FEAST DAY.

I.

Hark! heard ye not yon footsteps dread,
That shook the hall with thund’ring tread?
With eager haste
The Fellows pass’d,
Each, intent on direful work,
High lifts his mighty blade, and points his deadly fork.

II.

But, hark! the portals sound, and pacing forth,
With steps, alas! too slow,
The College Gypts, of high illustrious worth,
With all the dishes, in long order go.
In the midst a form divine,
Appears the fam’d sir-loin;
And soon, with plums and glory crown’d
Almighty pudding sheds its sweets around.
Heard ye the din of dinner bray?
Knife to fork, and fork to knife,
Unnumber’d heroes, in the glorious strife,
Through fish, flesh, pies, and puddings, cut their destin’d way.

III.

See beneath the mighty blade,
Gor’d with many a ghastly wound,
Low the famed sir-loin is laid,
And sinks in many a gulf profound.
Arise, arise, ye sons of glory,
Pies and puddings stand before ye;
See the ghost of hungry bellies,
Points at yonder stand of jellies;
While such dainties are beside ye,
Snatch the goods the gods provide ye;
Mighty rulers of this state,
Snatch before it is too late;
For, swift as thought, the puddings, jellies, pies,
Contract their giant bulks, and shrink to pigmy size.

IV.

From the table now retreating,
All around the fire they meet,
And, with wine, the sons of eating,
Crown at length the mighty treat:
Triumphant plenty’s rosy traces
Sparkle in their jolly faces;
And mirth and cheerfulness are seen
In each countenance serene.
Fill high the sparkling glass,
And drink the accustomed toast;
Drink deep, ye mighty host,
And let the bottle pass.
Begin, begin the jovial strain;
Fill, fill the mystic bowl;
And drink, and drink, and drink again;
For drinking fires the soul.
But soon, too soon, with one accord they reel;
Each on his seat begins to nod;
All conquering Bacchus’ pow’r they feel,
And pour libations to the jolly god.
At length, with dinner, and with wine oppress’d,
Down in their chairs they sink, and give themselves to rest.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE AT CAMBRIDGE.

Sir Robert Walpole, the celebrated minister, was bred at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. At the first he raised great expectations as a boy, and when the master was told that St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, had with others, his scholars, distinguished themselves for their eloquence, in the House of Commons, “I am impatient to hear that Walpole has spoken,” was his observation; “for I feel convinced he will be a good orator.” At King’s College his career was near being cut short by an attack of the small-pox. He was then known as a fierce Whig, and his physicians were Tories, one of whom, Dr. Brady, said, “We must take care to save this young man, or we shall be accused of having purposely neglected him, because he is so violent a Whig.” After he was restored, his spirit and disposition so pleased the same physician, that he added, “this singular escape seems to be a sure prediction that he is reserved for important purposes,” which Walpole remembered with complacency.

Dr. Lamb, the present master of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in his edition of Master’s History of that College, gives the following copy of a bill, in the handwriting of Dr. John Jegon, a former master, which may be taken as a specimen of

A COLLEGE DINNER AT THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY:—

The same authority gives the following curious item as occurring in 1620, during the mastership of the successor of Dr. Jegon, Dr. Samuel Walsall, who was elected in 1618, under the head of

AN ACCOUNT OF THE WINE, &c., CONSUMED AT A COLLEGE AUDIT.

“Hence it appears,” observes Dr. L., “sack was 1s. 2d. a quart, claret 8d., and tobacco 1s. 6d. an ounce. That is, an ounce of tobacco was worth exactly four pints and a half of claret.” Oxford, more than Cambridge, observed, and still observes, many singular customs. Amongst others recorded in Mr. Pointer’s curious book, is the now obsolete and very ancient one at Merton College, called

THE BLACK-NIGHT.

Formerly the Dean of the college kept the Bachelor-fellows at disputations in the hall, sometimes till late at night, and then to give, them a black-night (as they called it;) the reason of which was this:—“Among many other famous scholars of this college, there were two great logicians, the one Johannes Duns Scotus, called Doctor Subtilis, Fellow of the college, and father of the sect of the Realists, and his scholar Gulielmus Occam, called Doctor Invincibilis, of the same house, and father of the sect of the Nomenalists; betwixt whom there falling out a hot dispute one disputation night, Scotus being the Dean of the college, and Occam (a Bachelor-fellow therein,) though the latter got the better on’t, yet being but an inferior, at parting submitted himself, with the rest of the Bachelors, to the Dean in this form, Domine, quid faciernus? (i. e. Sir, what is your pleasure?) as it were begging punishment for their boldness in arguing; to whom Scotus returned this answer, Ite et facite quid vultis (i. e. Begone, and do as you please.) Hereupon away they went and broke open the buttery and kitchen doors, and plundered all the provisions they could lay hands on; called all their companions out of their beds, and made a merry bout on’t all night. This gave occasion for observing the same diversion several times afterwards, whenever the Dean kept the Bachelor-fellows at disputation till twelve o’clock at night. The last black-night was about 1686.”

THE FORCE OF IMAGINATION.

A learned Cantab, who was so deaf as to be obliged to use an ear trumpet, having taken his departure from Trinity College, of which he was lately a fellow, mounted on his well-fed Rosinante for the purpose of visiting a friend, fell in with an acquaintance by the way side, with whom he was induced to dine, and evening was setting in ere he pushed forward for his original destination. Warm with T. B., he had not gone far ere he let fall the reins on the neck of his pegasus, which took its own course till he was suddenly roused by its coming to a stand-still where four cross roads met, in a part of the country to which he was an utter stranger. What added to the dilemma, the direction-post had been demolished. He luckily espied an old farmer jogging homeward from market. “Hallo! my man, can you tell me the way to ——?” “Yes, to be sure I can. You must go down hin-hinder lane, and cross yin-yinder common on the left, then you’ll see a hol and a pightal and the old mills, and ——” “Stop, stop, my good friend!” exclaimed our Cantab; “you don’t know I’m deaf,” pulling his ear-trumpet out of his pocket as he spoke: this the farmer no sooner got a glimpse of, than, taking it for a pistol or blunderbuss, and its owner for a highwayman, he clapped spurs to his horse, and galloped off at full speed, roaring out for mercy as our Cantab bawled for him to stop, the muzzle of his horse nosing the tail of the farmer’s, till they came to an opening in a wood by the road side, through which the latter vanished, leaving the Cantab solus, after a chase of some miles,—and upon inquiry at a cottage, he learnt he was still ten or twelve from the place of his destination, little short of the original distance he had to ride when he first started from Cambridge in the morning. This anecdote reminds me of two Oxonians of considerable celebrity, learning, and singular manners. One was the late amiable organist of Dulwich College the Rev. Onias Linley, son of Mr. Linley, of Drury-lane and musical celebrity: he was consequently brother of Mrs. R. B. Sheridan. He was bred at Winchester and New College, and was remarkable, when a minor canon at Norwich, in Norfolk, for

HIS ABSENT HABITS,

And the ridiculous light in which they placed him, and for carrying a huge snuff-box in one hand, which he constantly kept twirling with the other between his finger and thumb. He once attended a ball at the public assembly rooms, when, having occasion to visit the temple of Cloacina, he unconsciously walked back into the midst of the crowd of beauties present, with a certain coverlid under his arm, in lieu of his opera hat; nor was he aware of the exchange he had made till a friend gave him a gentle hint. He occasionally rode a short distance into the country to do duty on a Sunday, when he used compassionately to relieve his steed by alighting and walking on, with the horse following, and the bridle on his arm. Upon such occasions he frequently fell into what is called “a brown study,” and arrived at his destination dragging the bridle after him, minus the horse, which had stopped by the way to crop grass. He was one day met on the road so circumstanced, and reminded of the fact by a gentleman who knew him. “Bless me,” said he, with the most perfect composure, “the horse was with me when I sat out. I must go back to seek him.” And back he went a mile or two, when he found his steed grazing by the way, bridled him afresh, and reached his church an hour later than usual, much to the chagrin of his congregation. The late Dr. Adams, one of the first who went out to Demerara after the established clergy were appointed to stations and parishes in the West Indies by authority, was a man of habits very similar to those of Mr. Linley, and very similar anecdotes are recorded of him, and his oddities are said to have caused some mirth to his sable followers. He died in about a year or two, much regretted notwithstanding.

THE EARLY POETS BRED IN THE HALLS OF GRANTA,

“Semper—pauperimus esse,” were nearly all blest with none or a slender competence. But what they wanted in wealth was amply supplied in wit. Spenser, Lee, Otway, Ben Johnson, and his son Randolph, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Prior, and Kit Smart, poets as they were, had fared but so so, had they lived by poësy only—and who ever dreamed of caring ought for their posterity.

Spencer was matriculated a member of Pembroke College, Cambridge, the 20th of May, 1569, at the age of sixteen, at which early period he is supposed to have been under his “sweet fit of poesy,” and soon after formed the design of his great poem, the Faery Queene, stanzas of which, it is said, on very good authority, were lately discovered on the removal of some of the old wainscoting of the room in which he kept in Pembroke College. He took B. A. 1573, and M. A. 1576, without succeeding to fellowship, died in want of bread, 1599, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, according to his request, near Chaucer. Camden says of him—

“Anglica, te vivo, vixit plautisque poesis,
Nunc moritura, timet, te moriente, mori!”

In the common-place-book of Edward, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, preserved amongst the MSS. of the British Museum, is the memoranda:—“Lord Carteret told me, that when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a man of the name of Spenser, immediately descended from our illustrious poet, came to be examined before the Lord Chief Justice, as a witness in a cause, and that he was so entirely ignorant of the English language, that they were forced to have an interpreter for him.” But I have no intention to give my readers the blues. “Nat. Lee” was a Trinity man, and was, as the folk say, “as poor as a church mouse” during his short life, four years of which he passed in Bedlam. An envious scribe one day there saw him, and mocked his calamity by asking, “If it was not easy to write like a madman?” “No, Sir,” said he; “but it is

VERY EASY TO WRITE LIKE A FOOL.”

Otway was bred at St. John’s College, Cambridge. But though his tragedies are still received with “tears of approbation,” he lived in penury, and died in extreme misery, choked, it is said, by a morsel of bread given him to relieve his hunger, the 14th of April, 1685. Ben Jonson, “Rare Ben,” also “finished his education” at St. John’s, nor did I ever tread the mazes of its pleasant walks, but imagination pictured him and his gifted contemporaries and successors, from the time of the minstrel of Arcadia to the days of Kirke White,

In dalliance with the nine in ev’ry nook,
A conning nature from her own sweet book.

But Ben, though “the greatest dramatic poet of his age,” after he left Cambridge, “worked with a trowel at the building of Lincoln’s Inn,” and died poor in everything but fame, in 1637. Ben, however, contrived to keep nearly as many “jovial days” in a year, as there are saints in the Roman calendar, and at a set time held a club at the same Devil Tavern, near Temple-bar, to which the celebrated Cambridge professor, and reformer of our church music, Dr. Maurice Greene, adjourned his concert upon his quarrel with Handel, which made the latter say of him with his natural dry humour, “Toctor Creene was gone to de tavil.” There Ben and his boon companions were still extant, when Tom Randolph (author of “The Muses’ Looking-Glass,” &c.,) a student of Trinity College, Cambridge, had ventured on a visit to London, where, it is said, he stayed so long, that he had already had a parley with his empty purse, when their fame made him long to see Ben and his associates. He accordingly, as Handel would have said, vent to de tavil, at their accustomed time of meeting; but being unknown to them, and without money, he was peeping into the room where they sat, when he was espied by Ben, who seeing him in a scholar’s thread-bare habit, cried out “John Bo-peep, come in.” He entered accordingly, and they, not knowing the wit of their guest, began to rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse, and, withal, to call for his quart of sack. There being but four, he thus addressed them:—

“I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep,
With each one his good fleece,
If that you are willing to give me five shilling,
’Tis fifteen pence a-piece.”

“By Jesus,” exclaimed Ben (his usual oath,) “I believe this is my son Randolph!” which being confessed, he was kindly entertained, and Ben ever after called him his son, and, on account of his learning, gaiety, and humour, and readiness of repartee, esteemed him equal to Cartwright. He also grew in favour with the wits and poets of the metropolis, but was cut off, some say of intemperance, at the age of twenty-nine. His brother was a member of Christ Church, Oxford, and printed his works in 1638. Amongst the Memorabilia Cantabrigiæ of Milton is the fact, that his personal beauty obtained for him the soubriquet of

“THE LADY OF THE COLLEGE;”

And that he set a full value on his fine exterior, is evident from the imperfect Greek lines, entitled, “In Effigie ejus Sculptorem,” in Warton’s second edition of his Poems. Some have supposed he had himself in view, in his delineation of the person of Adam. Every body knows that his “Paradise Lost” brought him and his posterity less than 20l.: but every body does not know that there is a Latin translation of it, in twelve books, in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, in MS., the work of one Mr. Power, a Fellow of that Society, who printed the First Book in 1691, and completed the rest at the Bermudas, where his difficulties had obliged him to fly, and from whence it was sent to Dr. Richard Bentley, to publish and pay his debts with. However, in spite of his creditors, it still remains in MS. The writer obtained, says Judge Hardinge, alluding I suppose, to “the tempest of his mind and of his habits,” the soubriquet of the “Æolian Exile.” There is also a bust of Milton in the Library of Trinity College, and some of his juvenile poems, &c., in his own hand-writing. Cowley was bread at Trinity College. His bust, too, graces its Library, and his portrait its Hall.

BOTH THESE ALUMNI,

When students, wrote Latin as well as English verses, and the curious in such matters, on reference to this work, will be amused by the difference of feeling with which their Alma Mater inspired them. To Cowley the Bowers of Granta and the Camus were the very seat of inspiration; Milton thought no epithet too mean to express their charms: yet, says Dyer, in his supplement, “it is difficult to conceive a more brilliant example of youthful talent than Milton’s Latin Poems of that period.” Though they “are not faultless, they render what was said of Gray applicable to Milton—

‘HE NEVER WAS A BOY.’”

His mulberry tree, more fortunate than either that of Shakspeare, or the pear tree of his contemporary and patron, Oliver Cromwell, is still shown in the Fellows’ Garden of Christ College, and still “bears abundance in fruit-time,” and near it is a drooping ash, planted by the present Marquis of Bute, when a student of Christ College.

CROMWELL’S PEAR-TREE

I saw cut down, from the window of my sitting-room, in Jesus-lane, Cambridge (which happened to overlook the Fellows’ Garden of Sidney College,) in March, 1833. The tree is said to have been planted by Cromwell’s own hand, when a student at Sidney College, and, said the Cambridge Chronicle of the 11th of the above month, it seems not unlikely that the original stock was coeval with the Protector. The tree consisted of five stems (at the time it was cut down,) which rose directly from the ground, and which had probably shot up after the main trunk had been accidentally or intentionally destroyed. Four of these stems had been dead for some years, and the fifth was cut down, as stated above. “A section of it, at eight feet from the ground, had 103 consecutive rings, indicating as many years of growth for that part. If we add a few more for the growth of the portion still lower down, it brings us to a period within seventy years of the Restoration; and it is by no means improbable that the original trunk may have been at least seventy or eighty years old before it was mutilated. The stumps of the five stems are still left standing, the longest being eight feet high; and it is intended to erect a rustic seat within the area they embrace.”

OTHER MEMORIALS OF CROMWELL

At Sidney College, are his bust, in the Master’s Lodge, and his portrait in the Library. The first was executed by the celebrated Bernini, at the request of Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from a plaster impression of the face of Cromwell, taken soon after his death. It was obtained by the late learned Cambridge Regius Professor of Botany, Thomas Martyn, B. D., during his stay in Italy, and by him presented to the Society of Sidney College, of which he was a fellow. Lord Cork said it bore “the strongest character of boldness, steadiness, sense, penetration, and pride.” The portrait is unique, drawn in crayons, by the celebrated Cooper, and is said to be that from which he painted his famous miniatures of the Protector. In the College Register is a memorandum of Cromwell’s admission to the society, dated April 23, 1616, to which some one has added his character, in Latin, in a different hand-writing, and very severe terms.

DRYDEN CONFINED TO COLLEGE WALLS.

Dryden, whom some have styled “The True Father of English Poetry,” was fond of a college life, as especially “favourable to the habits of a student.” He was bread at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he resided seven years, during which he is said never, like Milton and others, to have “wooed the muses.” What were his college habits is not known. The only notice of him at Trinity (where his bust and portrait are preserved, the first in the Library, the second in the Hall,) whilst an undergraduate, is the following entry in the College Register, made about two years after his admission:—“July 19, 1652. Agreed, then, that Dryden be put out of Comons, for a fortnight at least, and that he goe not out of the College during the time aforesaid, excepting to Sermons, without express leave from the Master or Vice-master (disobedience to whom was his fault,) and that, at the end of the fortnight, he read a confession of his crime in the Hall at the dinner-time, at the three fellows’ table.”

His contemporary, Dennis the Critic, seems to have been less fortunate at Cambridge. The author of the “Biographia Dramatica” asserts that he was