OXFORD MEMORIES.
 
 " SHALLOW : By yea and nay, sir, I dare say, my cousin 
 William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford, 
 still, is he not ? 
 
 " SILENCE : Indeed, sir ; to my cost." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : 2 Henry IV. iii. 2.
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES 
 
 A RETROSPECT 
 AFTER FIFTY YEARS 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 JAMES PYCROFT B.A 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE OXFORD 
 
 Z/V TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 
 
 Dublisfirrs in <T>riJinan> to iiirr J-Hairstj) Ifir iteen 
 1886 
 
 [The right of trantlatton and all other rights reterved.]
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE greater part of my Eeminiscences have 
 appeared in " London Society " (some of them at 
 an interval of years), but they may claim to be 
 presented in a more lasting form, with numerous 
 additions which from time to time have recurred 
 to my mind. 
 
 If I speak of things before the present race of 
 Oxonians were either born or thought of, human 
 nature ever is the same. Aristotle in Greece and 
 Horace in Eome, three centuries later, painted 
 youth true to its characteristics in the present 
 day. Men still commit " the oldest sins," though 
 " in the newest kind of ways," and the " years of 
 discretion " still arrive, the said discretion lagging 
 painfully behind. I write of a season when the 
 animal is fighting hard against the moral, and 
 when as to the intellectual it is a light of a very 
 nickering kind. I write of fathers .knowing very 
 little of the weakness of their, own -sons, and of 
 sons knowing very much of the weakness of their 
 
 2068077
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 own fathers. I write of " blessings " in too many 
 cases proving blisters ; but these dark scenes I am 
 happily able to relieve by noble instances of 
 honourable emulation and self-denial. 
 
 If it is true that every man's life would be in- 
 structive if faithfully written as it is passed, a 
 season of life when human nature if most erratic 
 is most original a transition or hobby-de-hoy 
 state may be a new study for my friends. This I 
 offer in a series of o'er true tales, believing that 
 the moral is ever the more impressive when the 
 reader is left to draw it for himself. 
 
 J. P.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. HOW I PASSED FROM SCHOOL TO COLLEGE, AND 
 
 THE QUEER CHARACTERS I MET THERE . , 1 
 
 II. HOW THOSE QUEER CHARACTERS ACTED IN A 
 
 QUEER WAY 26 
 
 in. OF CERTAIN DONS OF A PAST DAY, AS QUEER AS 
 
 THE SAID QUEER UNDERGRADUATES ... .47 
 
 IV. OF CERTAIN OLD FRIENDS SOME OF WHOM HAVE 
 "ACHIEVED GREATNESS," AND OTHERS WHO 
 HAVE HAD " GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM " 66 
 
 V. CONCERNING COLLEGE EXAMINATIONS AND 
 
 CERTAIN CANDIDATES KNOWN TO FAME . . 86 
 
 VI. A COMMON CHAPTER OF COLLEGE LIFE, WITH 
 
 RATHER UNCOMMON INCIDENTS , . . .113 
 
 VII. OF CERTAIN CHARACTERS, MORE AS CAUTIONS 
 
 THAN AS GOOD EXAMPLES 134 
 
 VIII. HOW SOME MEN ASPIRED TO THE HONOURS OF 
 "THE IRELAND SCHOLARSHIP," AND OTHERS 
 CRAMMED FOR A "PASS" ..... 155 
 
 IX. THE "GREAT GO " AND "NO GO" AT ALL . 180
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 X. GOING UP FOR A FIRST CLASS, WITH A VERY 
 
 INTERESTING EPISODE 199 
 
 XI. TAKING A DEGREE. SOME NICE BOYS, AND WHAT 
 
 BECAME OF THEM 213 
 
 XII. THE DEBTOR'S PROGRESS FIRST PART ... 229 
 
 XIII. THE DEBTOR'S PROGRESS SECOND PART . . 260 
 
 XIV. PROCTORS AND ADVENTURES VARIOUS . 288
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW i PASSED FROM: SCHOOL TO COLLEGE, AND THE 
 
 QUEER CHARACTERS I MET THERE. 
 
 SINCE " the boy is father to the man," as says the 
 proverb, to understand the natural history of the 
 full-grown boy at College, we may begin with a 
 few words about the said boy's character at school 
 some fifty years since. 
 
 At that time society generally was in a ruder 
 state. Two-bottle men at dinner-parties, good- 
 fellowship measured by the capacity of the 
 stomach and the hardness of the head ; prize 
 fights so popular as to be detailed round by 
 round in the " Morning Post " ; Tom and Jerry 
 frolics in London, and affairs of honour decided 
 by shooting and being shot on Wimbledon 
 Common such rough play will give some idea 
 of the social atmosphere around the paternal 
 home in which, fifty years since, boys first drew 
 the breath of life. 
 
 When school-days commenced, many a boy 
 VOL. i. '1
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 found himself suddenly launched into a sea of 
 troubles ; whether his bill of pains and penalties 
 would be longer from the bullying of the 
 bigger boys or from the severity of the masters 
 it were hard to tell. Professor Creasy bears 
 witness that in his time, about fifty-five years 
 since, the life of an Eton Colleger, in the Long 
 Chamber, was about as hard as that of a cabin- 
 boy on board a ship. 
 
 As the fate of the fag depended on the character 
 of his senior, naturally his usage was as bad as 
 might be expected from the rough training this 
 petty tyrant, while yet a fag, had himself received. 
 Cruelty begat cruelty, and few would believe the 
 misery which in those 'days any poor, weak and 
 nervous boy has been known to endure. I say 
 weak and nervous, because parents did not then 
 think so much about our constitutions, and some 
 boys I knew who were as unfitted for so hard a 
 life as a consumptive patient is for the frozen 
 regions. Pitched battles were common. Six fights 
 was the smallest number with which I could myself 
 escape. The common course was of this kind 
 "Thompson, would you take a licking from 
 Jones?" "No." "Well, then, come to the 
 corner after school." 
 
 Happily, however, at Eton, about 1825, a
 
 SCHOOL DAYS AS THEY WERE. 3 
 
 decided check was put to the frequency of these 
 fights, though by a most painful occurrence. 
 The brother of a nobleman now living, fought 
 pluckily, but too pluckily, was even primed with 
 brandy by his eager backers, and was led back 
 to his room in a state of exhaustion, and in a few 
 hours he was dead ! 
 
 The aiders and abettors were punished and the 
 conqueror was tried for manslaughter at the Old 
 Bailey, but discharged, as no evidence was 
 brought against him, and, strange to say, he 
 returned to Eton, though, badly received, he soon 
 left. 
 
 This sad event happened in the days of that 
 Splagosus Orbilio, Dr. Keate, whose name is far 
 more associated with the flogging-block than with 
 learning. No doubt Keate was a scholar, only 
 in " teaching the young idea how to shoot " the 
 breech-loading principle with him was all in all. 
 Once a whole division of seventy boys, hoping to 
 find safety in the multitude of transgressors, 
 agreed to miss a penally imposed " absence." 
 Finding Dr. Keate had put them all in " the 
 bills " for the next day, they resolved one and 
 all to refuse to be flogged, thereby electing to be 
 expelled, for which severe measure they flattered 
 themselves that they were far too many. But Keate 
 
 1*
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 was equal to the occasion, and adopted the 
 tactics " divide and conquer," or encounter your 
 enemy in detail. He let them all go to bed, and 
 arranged that about ten o'clock at night each 
 master should call and bring up his separate 
 contingent, without allowing time for unity of 
 action. So when the seventy compared notes 
 in the morning, they found that they were all 
 sore alike, and learnt the wholesome truth that 
 they could never be too many to be flogged when 
 their names were once in " the bills." 
 
 With names once in these bills, not a word 
 would Keate hear, so he once flogged a dozen 
 innocent boys sent up, not for flogging, but to be 
 prepared for Confirmation ! Keate had called for 
 a list of candidates, and this list had been unluckily 
 made out on one of those ill-omened papers ! 
 
 The newspapers made much of this harsh 
 measure, but Keate had saved a probable 
 rebellion, as others might have supported the 
 seventy. 
 
 Some time before this midnight punishment 
 there had been a notable rebellion at Winchester. 
 An old gentleman lately told me the whole story. 
 The boys, treated inhumanly and almost starved 
 on short commons, organised a " lock-out." They 
 laid in a store of food and water, each of the
 
 THE WINCHESTER REBELLION. 5 
 
 elder boys had his appointed guard and watch, 
 and thus they defied authority, and no one could 
 induce them to come out of their quarters. The 
 obnoxious head-master came to force the door, 
 and was plainly told there was a pistol ready, 
 and he was a dead man if he dared to enter. 
 The other masters were popular : one of them 
 having invited a party, the rebels arranged, 
 strange to say, to open their barriers, and gave 
 the guests a guard of honour ! Then the Mayor 
 was consulted, and a file of soldiers demanded, 
 but the commanding-officer sensibly replied he 
 should not expose his men to bullets in a case 
 to be better settled by birch. Eventually the 
 mutineers were starved out, and, though severe 
 punishment followed, the head-master did not 
 long continue his wicked reign. 
 
 The early days of Rugby could boast of no 
 higher type of boy civilisation. " Tom Brown " 
 bears witness of the work which Dr. Arnold at 
 his first appointment found to do ; and I am 
 speaking of times rather earlier than "Tom 
 Brown's." Dr. Arnold, too, began with far more 
 severity than would be tolerated now. I remem- 
 ber on one occasion, letters in the newspapers 
 from shocked and indignant parents charging the 
 Doctor with excessive severity, when the Homeric
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 epithet of Polu-flog-boio was wittily applied. In 
 short, before the celebrated letters by "Pater- 
 familias " with which the late Jacob Omnium (Mr. 
 Higgins) inaugurated the "Cornhill Magazine," 
 letters which exposed the shortcomings of Eton, 
 the system of our public schools was such as to 
 necessitate much menial work under the name of 
 Fagging from economy of servants, and to 
 necessitate frequent punishment for want of 
 masters as a sufficient police of prevention. 
 
 The consequence of such " early training and 
 preparation for college" was naturally to send 
 up some nice boys for future drunken wine-parties 
 and College ro\vs. For such scenes were not un- 
 common in my day. I used to wonder why the 
 generality of men ever came to college at all. At 
 least half of them seemed to be utterly indifferent 
 to all educational influences. They " cut lecture" 
 as often as they could, and left to the last terms 
 any serious preparation either for the Little 
 Go (for the term Smalls was then unknown) or 
 for the Great. The standard of proficiency for 
 these examinations always seemed too low, and the 
 books to be given up too limited, to represent the 
 study of three whole years. "But," said Mr. 
 Short, " it is as far as we can go when the 
 school standard is raised, we can rise too. Nine
 
 COLLEGE EDUCATION DEFINED. 7 
 
 men out of ten here, as in the world at large, 
 though intellectual animals in a book of natural 
 history, have a much stronger dash of the animal ; 
 few seem to have been in the way when the 
 second share of brains was served out." 
 
 I see now that between the man and the boy 
 the hobby-de-hoy age there is a very critical 
 period to be passed. At this time, says a dis- 
 tinguished physiologist, the animal nature is 
 developed, but the moral nature lags behind ; 
 it is pre-eminently a dangerous age ; man is 
 supremely sensual, selfish and wrong-headed. To 
 get creditably through this crisis is the difficulty, 
 and so far Oxford serves as a wider school to exercise 
 some modicum of restraint and to give full liberty 
 by degrees. A man if idle had better be idle in 
 good company ; the worst set he can join at 
 Oxford would be an improvement on the rakes of 
 a country-town. 
 
 Only yesterday a friend asked me about a 
 University education for his son. I replied, " For 
 what profession or course of life do you intend to 
 prepare him ? " 
 
 He said, " For the Bar." 
 
 " But does he aspire to become an enlightened 
 jurist, and like Lord Selborne to rise from college 
 to the higher walks in political life ? If so, a
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 college education will be a profitable investment 
 for a rich man's son, but if you only expect him 
 to earn a moderate income in ordinary business, I 
 cannot say that the high road to legal success lies 
 through Oxford." 
 
 And this leads me to the point ; Oxford should 
 be regarded simply as what it professes to be, a 
 place of education. Except so far as it sharpens 
 the faculties it has no bearing on professional life. 
 Instead of being any aid or preparation for busi- 
 ness, College is decidedly a hindrance ; first, 
 because it is a peculiar and almost to be called an 
 artificial sphere, with a very partial view of life in 
 general, and secondly because the Collegian forms 
 habits of nicety and exclusiveness, studying 
 human nature rather in books than in the wide 
 world, which habits the man of business must at 
 once proceed to correct. 
 
 " I would back a young attorney's clerk," said 
 an old barrister, " to pick up information by his 
 eyes and ears, and there is no little which a 
 lawyer cannot learn otherwise, faster -than 
 the best scholar that ever came from the 
 University." 
 
 After hearing this, my friend rejoined : " Then 
 the same time spent first in a solicitor's and after- 
 wards in a conveyancer's office would be so much
 
 WHAT TO EXPECT FROM COLLEGE. 9 
 
 time and experience gained in advancement for 
 the Bar ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly as you say, ' for the Bar,' for 
 Oxford has no more to do with a man's legal 
 habits than with his agricultural habits, in case he 
 were intended for a farmer. Oxford proposes 
 neither to make the lawyer nor to make the 
 farmer, but to make the man. It teaches c man 
 doth not live by bread alone,' having heart, brain 
 and divers mysterious feelings and sensibilities, as 
 important to a properly bred human being as his 
 digestive organs ; it prefers the wide views of a 
 Newton to the L.S.D.-isrn of a Cocker. Of this 
 truth I doubt if fathers used often to think, or 
 think now, in sending their sons to College. 
 Men act from mixed motives and are rarely very 
 logical, if they reason at all, about starting their 
 sons in this busy world ; but a money return 
 commonly stands before a moral one. Some 
 parents have an eye to scholarships and fellow- 
 ships, little thinking that if we regard such prizes 
 as those of a lottery, the cost of a University 
 education is rather too much to pay for a ticket 
 to draw. And some send their sons, they know 
 not distinctly why ; probably because it is held 
 the right thing to do and because others do so ; 
 seeing, as said Conversation Sharpe, l most men
 
 10 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 have their thinking, like their washing, done 
 out.' " 
 
 For my own part, for whatever reason I was 
 sent to Oxford, my life has passed all the more 
 creditably as well as pleasantly for the habits, 
 social, moral and intellectual, which I formed 
 there. For how could I have passed ni}^ time, 
 as well, between the ages of eighteen and twenty- 
 one ? Imagine my position at that age, in any 
 house of business or in a lawyer's office. Only 
 reflect, and realise the sharp practice, the 
 chicanery and selfishness in all its forms, which 
 constitute the very atmosphere of the business in 
 this wicked world ; and then compare such early 
 training with a sphere like Oxford, where mere 
 money stands for so little, and where, as nowhere 
 else, the man stands so much for what he is worth. 
 For at Oxford, all social distinctions are justly set 
 aside ; the winner of the Prize poems, of the 
 Ireland Scholarship, of " a splendid First Class," 
 or any other university distinction as also to be 
 one of the University eight on the river, or cf the 
 University eleven in the cricket-ground these 
 personal distinctions form the University Peerage, 
 for there, most truly, we are made to feel with the 
 Poet Burns 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea stamp, 
 The man's the gold for a' that."
 
 COLLEGE AND NO COLLEGE COMPARED. 11 
 
 Suppose again this same critical and plastic 
 period of life were spent at home, in any rural 
 village or provincial town, how limited the circle, 
 how mixed the society into which the youth is 
 likely to drift ! The groom, the game-keeper, the 
 billiard-marker, and that questionable set of such 
 out-door acquaintances who are never to be in- 
 troduced to the ladies of the family, form no 
 small part of those daily " communications that 
 corrupt good manners." 
 
 I doubt not that Oxford still compares as a field 
 for youthful training, very favourably with the 
 alternative sphere which I have described ; but I 
 am sure the comparative advantage of an Oxford 
 education, or call it mere Oxford residence and 
 college society, was decidedly superior some fifty 
 years since. For now, Oxford necessarily reflects 
 general society, where the commercial classes 
 stand higher on the social ladder. True, " gentle 
 is that gentle does," still there is a certain tone 
 and degree of refinement rarely to be found in 
 the first generation of the nouveaux riches, 
 men whose family tree is a mere sapling. In my 
 day, such men were rarely met at college ; 
 it was whispered quite as a secret that Thompson's 
 father was a tanner, though in a large way of 
 business : and I smile as I record that it did not
 
 12 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 sound respectable that Smithers was only the son 
 of the Colchester Town Clerk Town Clerk and 
 Parish Clerk, in our limited knowledge of such 
 offices, being deemed about identical ! But now 
 Oxford, like general society, cannot afford to be 
 so exclusive. Granted that we may presume 
 that a man of Oxford education is generally fit for 
 a gentleman's dinner party, the test that would 
 try some of them very hard, is how far they 
 would seem at ease in the Drawing-room. 
 
 I remarked some years since to Professor Max 
 Miiller, that so generally did youths, at the age at 
 which men are sent to college, take the very hue 
 and tone of the society around them, that each 
 College had its distinct style and character. See- 
 ing three or four men standing together, I could 
 in my day have described the College to which 
 they belonged. Max Miiller replied, " That is 
 discernible still ; I can distinguish the same marks 
 and character of the different colleges in the men 
 I meet now." 
 
 I mention this because nothing could convey 
 so clearly the social influences for the formation 
 of character which an Oxford education involves. 
 My two friends, John and Charles Winfield, were 
 sent, the former to Christchurch and the latter to 
 Dash College, which was known as having a
 
 SHREWSBURY MEN OF MY TIME. 13 
 
 second-rate set. The result was that John came 
 away even with more polish than he went, and 
 Charlie has not rubbed off the lax and slangy 
 style of Dash College to the present day. 
 
 It is a day never to be forgotten when, in May, 
 1832, I first was sent to try for a scholarship at 
 Trinity. I don't plead guilty to having been 
 much inferior to my competitors could I have 
 been tried in my own line of reading ; but the 
 horse must be adapted to the course, and any 
 youth from a private school had as much chance 
 where every examination was adapted to the 
 public school system as a hunter has in running 
 for the Derby. 
 
 The Shrewsbury men under Dr. Butler then 
 carried off the Scholarships, but not the Classes in 
 the same proportion. Theirs was an early 
 and exhausting crop intellectual. By constant 
 recitation and practice in verses you may turn 
 out a kind of living verse machine and fill the 
 mind with odds and ends of Latin and Greek 
 lines, which come in for every translation likely to 
 be required. But this is to try the memory too 
 exclusively ; reasoning and originality are 
 neglected, and therefore the Shrewsbury scholars 
 proved a disappointment in the sciences, and 
 more than one Ireland scholar missed his first-
 
 14 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 class. Such a forcing system makes an early 
 show, but the Winchester men proved the better 
 in the end. Palmer, Lowe, Car dwell the names 
 first on the roll-call at Winchester three first-class 
 men of my day, have, entirely from their abilities 
 and training, since met each other in the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 I entered Trinity College, Oxford, for residence, 
 in the ensuing October term, and had soon an 
 introduction to two men at a Tutor's breakfast, 
 to which I was kindly invited. In this way Mr. 
 Short, better known as Tom Short, who outlived 
 his style and generation, and died at the age of 
 eighty-six years, nearly all spent in Trinity, used-to 
 make his observations of the tastes and habits of his 
 men. He was well suited to deal with the class 
 of men of that day. Very keen and sharp ; idle 
 excuses went for nothing with him ; the reading men 
 met much encouragement, and the hunting and 
 sporting men were rarely refused leave of absence 
 from lecture. I think he had a secret satisfaction 
 in the remark then often heard, that Trinity 
 turned out more red coats than most of the 
 colleges twice its size. 
 
 As to introducing freshmen, at some colleges 
 the tutor selected a kind of Proxenos, or intro- 
 ducer and patron general. Such a one was my
 
 A PLEASANT OXFORD CELEBRITY. 15 
 
 old friend Newman, while at Wadham, before he 
 became Demi of Magdalen College. 
 
 Alas, poor Newman ! Much fun, wit and 
 merriment died when he departed this life not 
 an unpleasant life to him about three years 
 since. Old Dr. Cyril Jackson, a very celebrated 
 dean of Christ Church, once remarked that he 
 should not wish to have all reading men ; he 
 wanted some idle men, to make diversions and 
 fun for the studious. Just such a man was 
 Newman, and such appeared to have been his 
 special mission. He was a very Yoric in Oxford 
 life. Well, Newman, when no longer a freshman, 
 grew impatient of the honours of showing, as he 
 said, a set of raw, beardless boys about the 
 premises, and of explaining for the twentieth 
 time the etiquette and customs of the place. 
 " So," said he, " I thought at last I was entitled 
 to a little amusement in consideration of my off- 
 time duties and as one who had done the state 
 some service. So, after indoctrinating one youth 
 more verdant than usual with strange notions of 
 the exceeding familiarity which existed between 
 the undergraduates and the 'Dons,' I left in his 
 room a note in the name of Mr. Vores, our college 
 tutor, to the following effect :
 
 16 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 " ' DEAR SIR, Observing that your rooms form 
 an angle with mine at the corner of the quadrangle, 
 and as I presume we are equally inconvenienced 
 by the necessity of a tire for breakfasts these hot 
 mornings, I write to propose and to explain a plan 
 I have invented for mutually boiling each other's 
 kettles. The accompanying sketch will best show 
 how easily a rod can pass from your window to 
 mine, made so that the ends can slip in and out of 
 a groove, to send the kettle on its little travels 
 backwards and forwards by help of a string on 
 your side and on mine. Now I will boil the kettle 
 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays if you will 
 render me the same service on the Tuesdays, 
 Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. 
 
 " ' Yours truly, 
 
 " ' A. YORES. 
 
 " ' P.S. Let me know your shaving hour, that 
 we may arrange matters accordingly.' " 
 
 It was only last year that my old friend White- 
 head laughed as he related how this simple fellow 
 came into Mr. Vores' rooms, while fifteen men 
 were deep in Aristotle, and put the tutor to con- 
 fusion, and all the class to the titter, by saying : 
 
 " Sir, I am come to accept your proposal." 
 
 " Proposal ? About what ? "
 
 DR. NEWMAN AND HIS HUMOUR. 17 
 
 " About boiling our kettles alternate mornings, 
 and " 
 
 "I don't understand you but but after 
 Lecture I will speak to you." 
 
 If this was a specimen of Newman's humour in 
 his undergraduate days at Wadham, he was no 
 less distinguished when advanced to the degree of 
 Dr. Newman at Magdalen. Dr. Newman's name, 
 as fellow of Magdalen, happened to have the same 
 initials as those of the present Cardinal, sometime 
 fellow of Oriel. Naturally there were occasional 
 mistakes in the delivery of letters, and one day 
 our friend received, mis-sent, a letter from a lady, 
 requesting first a subscription for her pet charity, 
 and at the same time some lines for her album. 
 Fancy her surprise in receiving as she supposed 
 from her reverend friend the following reply : 
 
 " My name is J. H. Newman, 
 
 And very grieved I am 
 That, like an orphaned lambkin, 
 I haven't got a dam." 
 
 It was by Newman, my quondam schoolfellow, 
 that I was introduced to some desirable and plea- 
 sant acquaintances no slight advantage to a 
 Freshman. A College, like other societies, is 
 divided into sets, and if you begin in a bad 
 set, you are not likely to end in a better. 
 
 VOL. i. 2
 
 18 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 First there was the rowing or the uproarious 
 set, who behaved like big schoolboys. These 
 were the men who made night hideous with 
 drunken and noisy wine parties men who 
 knocked in late and bribed the Porter not to 
 put down their names. Among these the most 
 conspicuous were Charlie Lane and Tom Briggs, 
 par nobile fratrum not to say arcades ambo ; 
 though their behaviour sometimes was too near 
 Byron's translation of the latter. Charlie was 
 a clever fellow, but all brain arid excitement, 
 and Tom was a man of peculiar capacity. In 
 the winners of the Derby or St. Leger his 
 memory was remarkable ; but as to the dates 
 of kings and queens he was nowhere. Indeed, 
 it was said that he thought the battle of Blen- 
 heim was fought in Woodstock Park! Charlie 
 might have done anything in point of talent, but 
 his mind was like a sharp weapon loose in the 
 handle, he was too restless and excitable to fix 
 his attention to any subject for many minutes 
 together. Charlie was one of the many lunatics 
 at large men who only do not count as mad 
 because they are not mischievous, but men whose 
 brains are subject to a periodical effervescence, 
 and who at times are no more answerable for 
 their words than a barrel-organ is for the tunes
 
 WILD BOYS AND THEIR DILEMMA. 19 
 
 it shall play. I am sorry to say, like the moral 
 of a story-book, Charlie came to a bad end. 
 Having squandered a small independence, he was 
 reduced to beg small sums of his former friends, 
 and Tom Briggs, who had a better eye to the 
 main chance, found it rather unpleasant, when 
 college days were passed and the old set 
 scattered, to have more than one visit on 
 Charlie's behalf from the messenger of a spong- 
 ing house. In the extremity of his misery, 
 Charlie had a legacy of some thousands, and 
 forthwith wrote letters around and returned 
 divers sovereigns and rive-pound notes to his 
 old friends who had helped him, " hoping to 
 take better care of myself in future." But this 
 was more than a man of his habits could answer 
 for. I met him years after in a very threadbare 
 condition. 
 
 As to bribing the College porter, though these 
 men are not usually to be won over, little Walker 
 was constitutionally indulgent, and Tom and 
 Charlie once found themselves in a sad dilemma. 
 They had been in a tandem to Ascot races, re- 
 turned just in time " to save Gates," that is before 
 12 o'clock at night, when little Walker, though 
 no one asked him, thought that they would prefer 
 that he should make no formal entry of their late 
 
 2*
 
 20 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 hours. Most unfortunate ! This led to a sus- 
 picion of climbing walls. 
 
 Entering College by climbing wall has always 
 been made a serious offence. A strange case 
 occurred at Magdalen. A Demi was sent 
 away and deprived of his Demiship for this 
 offence and reinstated seven years after, by 
 which time he had learnt that there had not 
 been in the Common Eoom Dons enough sitting 
 in judgment to form a legal quorum according 
 to the statutes. 
 
 * 
 
 Charlie and Briggs lived in the days of the very 
 excellent Isaac Williams, one of the original 
 Tractarians friend of Newman, Pusey, Keble 
 and others. Williams was too good for this 
 world at least for this world of Oxford, as 
 Oxford was in those days. His rule was too 
 strict and his standard too high to work with : 
 in other words, his leges were altogether out of 
 proportion to the mores 'of men of Tom and 
 Charlie's set. Williams abhorring Ascot, and 
 divining that these men had gone fc there, in 
 which case he should detect them by the 
 " Gate Bill," sent his servant to search all 
 the likely rooms, and thus ascertained that at 
 eleven o'clock at night they were not in College, 
 and finding, next morning, no names in the
 
 AN OLD-FASHIONED COLLEGE TUTOR. 21 
 
 porter's book, lie confidently accused both of 
 them of having scaled the garden wall. This 
 they denied, and thus their words w r ere in 
 conflict with the Gate Book, and this might 
 have been ruin to the porter ; but Mr. Short, I 
 am now sure, guessed the real state of the case 
 and took the matter out of Williams's hands, 
 and so the difficulty passed over. Short was 
 not a man to believe in the perfectibility of 
 human nature, whether in porters or in under- 
 graduates. Among college tutors there was no 
 better friend to a man in a scrape, if he was treated 
 openly and candidly. He was rather sharp and 
 imperative in his manners, formed as they had 
 been by some school work as a master at Eugby, 
 and without being unpleasant he would be rather 
 satirical at lecture. He would say to a man 
 who guessed at everything, "Where is such a 
 place not in Asia Minor ? " and " Where is 
 such an island not in the ^Egean Sea? A 
 most convenient puddle for guessing is that 
 J^gean Sea." 
 
 As we used to term our lectures Coaches, and 
 would say " the ten or eleven o'clock Coach," one 
 day when a class of pass-men, if not of to-be- 
 plucked men, were blundering over Euripides, 
 Short said, "I heard from my window Mr.
 
 22 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Wratislaw call my lecture a coach, and lie 
 named it 'The heavy Euripides,' and most 
 appropriately too, for it is heavy work indeed." 
 The English "Cribs," or translations in common 
 use, Short seemed to know pretty well, and so 
 one day, when Tom Briggs was bringing in 
 some wordy paraphrase in the wrong place, 
 Short said, " Stop a minute." Then, helping 
 him over an intervening line, he said, "Now 
 for it this is the place for those fine words." 
 
 Poor old Tom Short ! He out-lived his eye- 
 sight, and died at the age of 86. His name 
 was so identified with Oxford, and he will be 
 so long remembered as a survivor of men of 
 the old school, that I may relate two more 
 anecdotes which pre-eminently speak the man. 
 
 Will B., a well-known Oxford character, having 
 just been alarmed at hearing from a favourite 
 lady that "she was in trouble," asked Short 
 what he should do ; he replied in his usual 
 antithetical style, " Now you're in a pretty mess ; 
 if you do marry such a woman you are a great 
 fool, and if you don't you are a great blackguard." 
 Will B. decided on the former, and in my time he 
 had two pretty daughters whom he contrived to 
 marry to two young but rich pupils, whence we 
 called him " the judicious Hooker." Will was
 
 MORE OF "TOM SHORT." 23 
 
 once an examiner for the Little Go, and one of 
 his own pupils, Joe Smith, he plucked the first 
 time and passed the second, not, as we used to say, 
 that Joe was any better prepared for the second 
 examination than for the first, only Will wanted 
 to do a little more tuition, and to give time for 
 a longer flirtation with his daughter Sophonisba. 
 Still I must not convey the impression that this 
 was more than a College joke, or that men were at 
 all apt to question the fairness of the examiners. 
 
 On another occasion, when Short had been 
 invited to the house of a very strict family, he 
 was disappointed in the evening to see no pre- 
 paration for his favourite rubber of whist, but 
 a green baize form for a row of " pampered 
 menials " and a heap of bibles for an exposi- 
 tion. The subject was the shipwreck of St. 
 Paul, and as the very prosy and unlearned 
 expositor enunciated as a false quantity, " they 
 knew that the island was called Mellta " " The 
 deuce they did," said Short, in a stage whisper 
 rather. vawkwardly, but too audibly.* 
 
 But I was speaking of the uproarious set in 
 College. As I look over the old Oxford Almanac, 
 I find few indeed who have reached like me full 
 
 * Melita is pronounced short properly. The man pronounced it Melita 
 wrongly.
 
 24 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 three-score years and ten. They began too fast. 
 The reading set has generally outlived the fast set. 
 There were the two Maunders, who at most wine 
 parties drank more than they could carry one of 
 them rushed hastily into my room one day, and 
 asked me to give house room for certain sporting 
 prints, " for the Governor," he said, " is coming, 
 and he must not know my extravagance." John 
 Maunder married some low woman picked up at 
 Oxford, and came almost to beggary. Then I 
 remember Alex, who was a sharp practitioner, one 
 of those men who would sponge upon his friends 
 a practice all too easy with men of that free 
 and unsuspecting character which commonly 
 marked the age for College. One day as he was 
 
 CJ / 
 
 returning from hunting, a man rather wider 
 awake than others, remarked to me : " A cheap 
 amusement is that for Alex : that's Boevey's 
 mare he is riding, Wilson lent the ' Pink ' (the 
 red coat), and the whip is mine, and now Alex 
 will soak some one's wine till he is screwed." 
 I cannot say I was as sorry for him (Alex) as I 
 should have been for anyone else, when shortly 
 after I heard he was severly starred all down 
 the thigh, from a line of revolving spikes in 
 getting over the iron gate opposite Wadham. 
 Well, Alex's reign was a short one seedy at
 
 NARROW ESCAPE FROM RUSTICATION. 25 
 
 forty, a confirmed invalid at fifty and with a 
 diseased liver, easily accounted for, he ended 
 as a perfect skeleton short of three-score. This 
 scaling gates being a great College offence involved 
 certain rustication ; but there was one exception 
 the case of Dickenson, one of the Scholars, 
 and a wild one too. For the Scholars usually 
 are supposed to set a better example. He was 
 detected and called before a Common Eoom. 
 His rustication would involve the loss of his 
 Scholar's Gown and 80 a year, besides a 
 chance of a Fellowship. While our Dons were 
 halting between two opinions with ideas of 
 discipline on one hand and mercy on the other 
 a shout was heard in the quadrangle " Well 
 done, Trinity, Dickenson for ever!" "What 
 means that shout ? " said old Dr. Ingram, the 
 President. " It means that Dickenson is winner 
 of the Latin Prize Poem," said Mr. Williams, 
 entering the Common Eoom. "Then," said 
 Short, " that helps us out of the difficulty. In 
 Dickenson's case we may make a set-off, do an 
 act of grace, and pardon his offence, for the 
 honour he has done his College."
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 HOW THOSE QUEEK CHAKACTEES ACTED IN A QUEEK 
 
 WAY. 
 
 FEOM very peculiar circumstances this victory for 
 Dickenson was a great triumph indeed. While 
 competing for the same Latin verse prize the year 
 before, he had fallen, though I think very unfairly, 
 into disgrace. Dickenson had written a poem, 
 which, compared with that of Pritchard, who bore 
 away the prize, was considered by a friend a 
 good judge to be the better of the two. Much 
 was Dickenson's disappointment to find that his. 
 poem, delivered too late, had never been before 
 the judges at all. Shortly after, an article was 
 seen in the " Oxford Herald," copied from a paper 
 of Dickenson's own town of Dover, to the effect 
 that they might congratulate the son of their 
 respected neighbour on all the honour of the 
 Oxford Prize Poem, though, from want of some 
 punctilious formality on the part of the ex- 
 aminers, Mr. Pritchard had the prize. "Of course 
 Pritchard's friends were quick with a rejoinder. 
 And now the junior tutors were very severe upon 
 Dickenson and would not listen to any explanation,
 
 DICKENSON AN ALTERED MAN. 27 
 
 though nothing was more probable than what 
 Dickenson pleaded ; namely : that some officious 
 neighbour of his father to whom he had written 
 the true state of the case, had inserted a more 
 complimentary version, however unfair to 
 Pritchard. But now, once more, Short came 
 forth in his proper character ; he admitted the 
 explanation, and said smiling "Now all you 
 have to do, Dickenson, is to win next year to 
 vindicate your character." 
 
 There was much good in Dickenson, though he 
 set a bad example in his early days. Some four 
 years after, Tom Briggs met him in London and 
 said, " Well Dickenson, the odds are dropping on 
 the favourite for the ' Derby.' I suppose you have 
 a good book for the race as usual." " Oh ! no," 
 was the reply, "I have changed from all that. 
 Some years of my life I did harm enough in this 
 world, and now I am devoted for life to doing 
 a little good. There is an out-door congregation 
 expecting me down in Bethnal Green you'll 
 not believe in me as a street preacher but that 
 is, I suppose, my proper designation now." For 
 about two years he zealously followed his altered 
 and amended course, and then I read of his early 
 death. 
 
 I thought of poor Dickenson last year when I
 
 28 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 saw the new spikes on Trinity Gates spikes which 
 I hope are now formidable enough to discourage 
 any attempt to scale them. 
 
 In my day the spikes served less as an effectual 
 barrier than as a cruel trap, and besides the case 
 of Alex, Croome Mon Croome as we used to call 
 him might have lost his life upon them. He 
 sank down on the spikes, which pierced his leg by 
 his shin-bone. Croome was luckily an athlete, and 
 he told me that it took all his power accustomed 
 as he was to the feat of drawing up his weight by 
 the strength of his arms to raise himself off those 
 adhesive spikes. 
 
 And where was the so great temptation to enter 
 otherwise than by the lodge ? 
 
 Suppose a man had been out of Oxford and 
 missed the coach we should say Train now, but 
 there were no trains near Oxford in those days 
 the penalty of a night out of College was certain 
 rustication, with a strong presumption against 
 a man's moral character, and such I remember 
 was the jeopardy in particular of my half-crazy 
 friend, Brownie, the son of a Scotch Member of 
 Parliament. 
 
 I stayed at College to read one Christmas 
 vacation with, among others, Brownie, who 
 thought it too far to go to Scotland. One
 
 A SAD SCRAPE. 29 
 
 morning I found the College gate locked, and 
 asked the porter what it meant. "Mr. Short's 
 orders, sir Mr. Brownie's kept out. Mr. Short 
 wants to hear when he comes in. I expect Mr. 
 Brownie will have his walking ticket, sir." 
 
 Soon after Brownie came in and hastened to my 
 rooms to say what a scrape he was in, and he was 
 going to plead that, if his scout had reported that 
 he had not slept in his bed, he had fallen asleep 
 on my sofa and was not out of College at all. 
 While urging on him that Short had anticipated 
 all such excuses by shutting the gates, that 
 he certainly would send to me for confirmation, 
 and that Short was known to be the last man to 
 be put off with a humbugging story, Short's 
 servant came to summon him. In five minutes 
 Brownie came back to me with such a face ! He 
 had told Short he had fallen asleep on a friend's 
 sofa, at another College. 
 
 " Let your friend come and say so and I shall 
 excuse you." 
 
 " But," replied Brownie, " my friend may be 
 afraid of the consequences of such an irregu- 
 larity." 
 
 " Then say I promise to tell no one and 
 surely he will come, to render you so great 
 a service."
 
 30 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Here was a mess indeed ; for a friend to tell a 
 lie is hard to find. Still a man was found, and 
 thereon hangs a tale, or at least an incident which 
 gives me occasion to describe a peculiar phase of 
 College life in my time. 
 
 The society of undergraduates consists for the 
 most part of youths from the age of 18-19 as late 
 as 21-22 years a period of life in which men are 
 most unsuspecting, simple and, I may add, 
 generous. It is at a later age that men graduate 
 in designing, coldhearted and shameless vice. 
 But unhappily, there used always to be a 
 sprinkling of men of this later and exceptional 
 age and of this degraded character. There was 
 Alfred Wing, who had " seen life," which means 
 the darker side of it. He had knocked about 
 among that heartless, soulless set of betting and 
 racing men, a kind of experience which results in 
 sharp wits and a blunt conscience. He it was 
 who perpetrated the swindle of passing off a 
 Derby horse as his own and rooking his friends in 
 a University sweepstakes. 
 
 Again there was Scotton, who, four years before, 
 for his high crimes and misdemeanors, had to fly 
 from Oxford, and afterwards compounded with 
 College Dons and Oxford creditors, returned as 
 a married man to take his degree, and, having
 
 WORSE AND WORSE. 31 
 
 intercepted a note, horsewhipped the gallant Lord 
 Dash, of Christ Church, at the door of the Little 
 Go schools, as he was entering for his examination 
 which, notwithstanding, he did enter and passed. 
 Lord Dash sent for a friend, an officer from town, 
 to challenge Scotton, who simply said he should 
 not thus help him out of his disgrace. 
 
 Of the same age and class was Brownie's Scotch 
 friend, a man who boasted of that knowledge of 
 the world which teaches "how to commit the 
 oldest sins the newest kind of ways," and who, 
 hearing of Brownie's application having been 
 indignantly rejected by other men, said " What ! 
 all you want is some one to tell a lie for you ? 
 I am your friend at a push," and forthwith he 
 went to Short and said how he and his brother 
 Scot had fallen asleep over a recent importation 
 of small-still whiskey, and that they only awoke 
 too late. 
 
 But Brownie's day came at last. As an excuse 
 for his absence in London he wrote that he had 
 been very ill, and that both Dr. Brodie and Sir 
 Astley Cooper sat up with him all one night ! 
 This was rather too strong for Short's credulity. 
 He wrote to London, and found the whole plea 
 a falsehood, which, added to other deceptions by 
 Short especially abhorred, caused verbosa et grandis
 
 32 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 epistola to Mr. Brownie, senior, near Aberdeen, to 
 the effect that the hope of the family was setting 
 too bad an example in the College, and could be 
 tolerated there no longer. 
 
 Every father thinks that some one else cor- 
 rupts his own son, so much so that where the first 
 lesson of corruption comes from it were hard to 
 tell. Mr. Brownie, the Scotch Laird, soon made 
 his appearance, and, after being duly primed by 
 his son's mendacity, proceeded to argue the case 
 with Short. 
 
 Now, that there may be no mistake about 
 Short's real opinion of this big baby and jack- 
 pudding of the College, for such he was, I will 
 simply state that Short had taken his measure in 
 these terms " I should say Brownie is too great 
 a fool for a knave, if he were not too great a 
 knave for a fool." So when Mr. Brownie re- 
 marked that there must be bad as well as good 
 in all societies, but that in Trinity College, Oxford, 
 the bad seemed greatly to preponderate, Short 
 fired up and replied that while Brownie was there 
 this would be true enough, and as to the father's 
 expressed intention of sending him into the 
 Guards, if in six months he were not shot for 
 a liar, or turned out for a coward, he should be 
 surprised. Some time after the predicted six
 
 COLLEGE DISCIPLINE. 33 
 
 months had expired I met Brownie in Bond Street. 
 At first, from his military gait and decent attire, 
 I hardly knew him. He seemed no longer slovenly 
 and loutish, but " clothed and in his right mind." 
 " What," I said, " are you really in the Guards ? " 
 " Yes," he replied, " but I had to mend my 
 manners or I should not have been there till 
 this time ; but let alone manners, as to morals, 
 you thought me fast at college. Why, I was but 
 an infant in iniquity compared to the fellows in 
 our regiment. My father, you know, was so 
 savage. It took 2,000 to clear me. I burnt the 
 candle at both ends borrowed of the Jews to 
 spend among the " certain characters I will not 
 mention. Brownie did not survive his college 
 
 o 
 
 life five years. One of many cases where early 
 excess and a ruined constitution made the first 
 serious attack fatal. 
 
 I thought, when first I went to college, that I 
 was going to be altogether my own master, but 
 I soon found something of the restraint of school 
 come over again. Chapel once a day at least 
 was then enforced, and there were lectures which 
 detained me till twelve or one o'clock. The gates 
 were closed to egress at nine p.m. It was penal 
 to be out after twelve p.m. and after three a.m. it 
 counted the same as if you were out all night, 
 VOL. i. 3
 
 34 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 and involved a sentence of rustication. And even 
 if you knocked in after ten o'clock you frequently 
 would be treated with a little questioning and 
 admonition. Add to these checks the fact that, 
 with few exceptions, our visiting acquaintances 
 were chiefly in college, and you will see that we 
 lived as regards the Dons very much under their 
 inspection and control. It was not generally con- 
 sidered that the scouts, who commonly held their 
 appointments for life, would naturally be more in 
 the interests of their old masters, matured into 
 Tutors or Fellows, than of the undergraduates, 
 and no doubt much information as to the practices 
 of the men was privately conveyed by this ready 
 channel. 
 
 The Dons, over their wine in the Common 
 Eoom, would frequently compare observations as 
 to the character and the habits of the men. A 
 knowledge of their " set " and companions would 
 alone tell them much, and thus in various ways 
 we might be said to have lived in glass houses. 
 
 For great offences, rustication, being sent to 
 the paternal home to ruralize, or, as Short con- 
 strued it, " to give our manners and morals a little 
 airing," was the punishment. But this was not 
 likely to be the fate of any men whose dissolute 
 habits had not previously been scanned as afore-
 
 A ROW-ING WINE PARTY. 35 
 
 said. Besides the offence of staying out a whole 
 night, a noisy and uproarious wine party has been 
 visited with rustication. I remember Gregson, a 
 man who was almost mad when excited with wine, 
 in a room unfortunately nearest the President's 
 study, once stood on the table and, enacting a 
 shuffle and cut among the glasses and dessert 
 dishes, made a speech and then sang a song with 
 a chorus of men as excited and loud as himself. 
 Eobinson, in whose rooms this outrageous folly 
 took place, was next day summoned before a 
 Common Room, but pleaded it was not his party ; 
 he had lent his rooms to a friend the practice 
 sometimes of men who, near the end of their 
 residence, were indifferent to the wear and tear 
 of the furniture to be passed on to their successor. 
 When asked to name the friend, Eobinson respect- 
 fully declined, having been implored by his friend 
 Leir to save him from rustication. Leir feared 
 his father would be so incensed that he would 
 never trust him at Oxford again, whereas Robin- 
 son's father was believed to be more easily 
 reconciled. Robinson, therefore, had to bear 
 the consequences, and to leave the next day. 
 I happened to be a near neighbour to his family 
 at Bath, and saw a little of the way the news was 
 received. The old gentleman's equanimity
 
 36 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 sorely tried by one of my friends whom he 
 happened to consult for explanation. 
 
 " The nature of the punishment is very ingenious 
 and peculiar : in effect it is simply this the Dons 
 visit the sins of the sons on the pockets of the 
 fathers, for not teaching their sons better, and 
 then the fathers are pretty sure to make the home 
 for the time rather hot for the sons." 
 
 Though rather a laughable, this is a very true 
 explanation. 
 
 The man who has what the porter called " his 
 walking ticket " finds a sad gloom at home, and 
 very sinister looks in his father's friends and 
 neighbours, as I shall in due course have a tale 
 which will explain. It is always suspected that 
 there may be more than college frolics to account 
 for the disgrace. No doubt there have been some 
 exceptions, but I never knew any men rusticated 
 who were not throwing away all their acade- 
 mical opportunities, and were with good reason 
 a cause of anxiety to their friends. What is 
 termed " expulsion " is very rare ; I hardly 
 ever knew an instance. Men were always 
 allowed to take their .names off, and had a 
 chance of entering not, indeed, another college, 
 for no college would receive them, but at a Hall. 
 Halls were not so particular. For that reason,
 
 NEW INN HALL. 37 
 
 St. Mary's Hall " Skimmary," as it was called 
 had the name of " Transportation Hall," or 
 " Botany Bay," in those days ; but now the 
 President will admit of no excuse ; he will receive 
 only those who have never been at any other 
 college ; and probably other Halls are also less 
 disposed to give the reprobate a second chance. 
 
 This leads me to speak of New Inn Hall, and 
 how we men of Trinity had the honour (?) of estab- 
 lishing it. 
 
 About the time of the Eeform Bill, the idea of 
 reform and the libertjr of petitioning had become 
 very widely prevalent, and I suppose it was this 
 spirit of liberty. which had extended to the Univer- 
 sity. For, one day, being quite a freshman and 
 disposed to look up with reverence to men who 
 had been promoted in Hall some five tables above 
 me as a mark of seniority, I received a visit from 
 Welbore, one of the most distinguished of the 
 Scholars, to ask me to sign a petition ; " some- 
 thing for the benefit of the College." This 
 sagacious document proved to be nothing less 
 than a petition to the President to the effect that 
 Whereas the then Dean, Mr. Mitchell, was in 
 the habit of setting unusually long and very 
 frequent impositions for missing chapel, coming 
 in late, or other minor offences, visited heretofore
 
 38 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 far more lightly, and whereas thereby the valuable 
 time of studious men was greatly wasted, your 
 petitioners do herewith pray, &c. in short, do 
 pray for the President to interfere with the Dean 
 on behalf of those whom the Dean was officially 
 appointed to keep in order ! 
 
 As a freshman of course I deferred to the 
 opinion of my elders, supposed to be better 
 acquainted with college ways, and I added my 
 name to this precious document. A few of the 
 old stagers said, No ; the Scholars dare not sign 
 it ; the Dons have a hold on them, and if they 
 do sign they will be the first to give way and eat 
 humble pie. 
 
 This proved but too true ; the petition was re- 
 ceived with fiery indignation and deemed an im- 
 pertinence and an offence against all college dis- 
 cipline, and the Scholars were the very first to be 
 called to account, being considered as a select 
 class, by the wisdom and bounty of Sir Thomas 
 Pope and other founders, and in duty bound to 
 support authority and to set a good example. 
 Indeed the Scholars were never elected, even 
 after examination, till some inquiry had been 
 made as to their habits and steadiness of conduct. 
 So the Scholars were at once called up and 
 shown a form of recantation and apology, in Latin,
 
 BEFORE A COMMON ROOM. . 39 
 
 and this they were required to sign. My old 
 friend Webster argued that he had never in- 
 tended to imply any disrespect whatever. 
 
 " If you didn't," said Short, " the words did. 
 So sign this apology at once, or lay aside your 
 Scholar's gown." 
 
 " But," said Larken, " I have a right to petition, 
 even the Queen." 
 
 " Certainly," said Short. " And the Queen can't 
 rusticate you, but we can. Don't talk nonsense ; 
 you are not here as a free citizen of England, but 
 in statu pupillari, and must be taught to behave 
 yourself." 
 
 Part of the Latin apology ran thus : eo quod 
 contumaciter se gesserint. 
 
 " What is the meaning of behaving contumaciter?" 
 asked Wratislaw. " Why, bumptiously, to be sure," 
 said Lane, " and a very good interpretation too." 
 
 After the Dons had settled with the Scholars, I 
 like all the rest was called before the Common 
 Eoom, a most august assembly then held in Hall ; 
 for the usual Common Eoom would not hold so 
 large a number of offenders. 
 
 After a preliminary address to us, full of words 
 of astonishment and indignation, the old President, 
 with a heavy fist on the table, said, " What in the 
 world could you mean by such a petition ? "
 
 40 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Here he paused ; and our friend Charlie who, 
 standing nearest to the President, felt bound to 
 say something put on a very innocent expression 
 of countenance and said, 
 
 " All I knew, gentlemen, was, that it was a 
 petition. I am not in the habit of reading 
 petitions, they are all so much alike, but I always 
 take the precaution of asking if there is anything 
 to pay but they said there was nothing to pay 
 and so I signed." 
 
 This was said in Charlie's queerest of all queer 
 ways, and almost disturbed the gravity of the 
 Dons. 
 
 But there were four men, who partly from prin- 
 ciple, and partly to be quixotic and to show off, 
 refused to sign, or to do an imposition, for this 
 was required of them as seniors and knowing 
 better. Short tried hard to coax them, because I 
 believe he admired their honesty, and said to 
 George Owen who at Tiverton knows not the 
 Reverend George? "Do it in any time and in any 
 wa}', but do it, and don't foolishly separate your- 
 self from Trinity, so near the end of your career 
 and your degree." Still Owen, and with him 
 three others, his old chums, steadfastly refused. 
 Two at least of the four, if not all of them, were 
 till further distinguished as forming the noted
 
 COLLEGE TRICKS. 41 
 
 crew called the " Ugly four-oar." I am sorry to 
 make so personal a remark, but this crew was so 
 celebrated that Burningham of Trinity reminded 
 me of that ill-favoured quartette only last week 
 more than fifty years after date. These four took 
 their names off Trinity, and went to New Inn Hall 
 a surprise to Dr. Cramer, the Principal, with 
 quite a sinecure office, for at that time there was 
 not a single man in it and thus they gave a 
 realit}- to an institution up to that time a mere 
 abstraction and a name, though one of the oldest 
 foundations in Oxford. These four were soon 
 joined by three others, whose morals and manners 
 happened not to suit their respective colleges, and 
 we called that worthy party " The seven deadly 
 sins." 
 
 A few years before this there had been an 
 extensive migration from Christ church. Dr. 
 Gaisford, one of the first Greek scholars in 
 Europe, then Dean of Christchurch, held the red 
 coats of the hunting men in utter abomination, 
 and said he would have no such colours within 
 his walls. 
 
 Whereupon it was voted that he should have 
 rather too much of that colour. And true to the 
 word, one morning red enough met his eyes. The 
 walls and windows of the Deanery, as high as men
 
 42 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 could reach, were all painted red. This was at 
 first supposed to be the actual handiwork of the 
 same evilly disposed men who planned it, but a 
 glazier, regarding it with more curious eye, said, 
 " No gentleman ever did all that ; there was such 
 a deal to do in the time, and (examining closely) 
 the work is good. I'm blessed if they mustn't 
 have been regularly brought up to the business." 
 This proved to be true. The delinquents had 
 brought painters from London for the purpose, 
 for no Oxford tradesman would undertake it. 
 In a similar difficulty I once knew a workman 
 from Abingdon employed to make a duplicate 
 key for the gate of Trinity Garden. The Oxford 
 townsmen descry danger in such orders, however 
 well paid. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington's son was fully believed 
 to have been implicated in this strange frolic with 
 the paint, but as evidence failed, the Dons resented 
 the offence on some other pretence. The Duke, 
 as a strict disciplinarian, let his son do the imposi- 
 tion which was set him, and then, from a sense of 
 unfair play, removed him from Christchurch. 
 
 Another instance occurs to me of the vigilance 
 of the College Dons, and the keenness with which 
 they reason from the known habits of a man. 
 This I first observed in the case of Barham of
 
 FOUND OUT! 43 
 
 Balliol. Balliol was at that time rather more 
 strict in discipline than most other colleges. 
 Barham used to be quite surprised at the noisy 
 parties which passed unnoticed in his friend 
 Webster's room. They were both Shrewsbury 
 men ; a school at that time by no means as famed 
 for manners as for scholarship. Well, at one of 
 Webster's parties we heard that Barham of Balliol 
 had been confined to gates for the whole term, 
 that is, not allowed to go out after the first closing 
 of the gates at six o'clock, " as a bad boy," we said, 
 " not to be trusted out in the dark by himself." 
 But Barham had found a weak point in the Balliol 
 fortress, in the wall dividing Balliol garden from 
 Trinity, just under the window of Webster's room, 
 and if before we left we would give him a leg up 
 to the top of the wall, he could drop, by the help 
 of a tree to the other side, and be all right. 
 Oh, nescia mens hominum I In due time this was 
 done. We wished him a good-night, singing, 
 " For he's a jolly good fellow, &c.," and with his 
 last words he made an appointment with me about 
 some duck shooting for the next day. 
 
 The next day I found Barham quite an altered 
 man, and with such a long face that I said, 
 "What, all in the downs! Has anything hap- 
 pened ? "
 
 44 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 " Rusticated," he replied, " and what's worse, 
 the governor will be up here to-morrow. I have 
 denied pleaded that is ' not guilty,' and have 
 since stuck to it, because the porter admitted he 
 had seen not me, but that he only saw some one 
 like me, drop down from the wall." 
 
 Next day the father came, and like other fathers 
 believed too readily his own son, though the 
 greatest sinner must be somebody's son after all ; 
 so, fully prepared to maintain his son's perfect 
 innocence, he went to Barham's tutor. A father 
 unless like Brownie's, he turns accuser is sure 
 to be tenderly handled on such an occasion by 
 men of the class of Oxford tutors ; so Mr. Barham 
 was courteously received and addressed with no 
 little sympathy, and then the tutor proceeded 
 quietly to talk over the son's little misfortune, and 
 to explain, for the father's complete satisfaction, 
 the chain of evidence on which the Common 
 Room had acted. 
 
 First of all, knowing the habits of Barham and 
 his man}^ Shrewsbury friends, which led to far more 
 out-of-college visiting than was good for him, his 
 tutors suspected that Barham would try to defeat 
 them in the attempt to confine him to college ; and 
 therefore they gave the porter strict orders to 
 watch the gate.
 
 THE EVIDENCE TOO STRONG. 45 
 
 Secondly, the porter had noted, on the evening 
 in question, that Barham had gone out before 
 closing of gates at six o'clock and had not re- 
 turned ; he did not re-enter college that way 
 at all. 
 
 Thirdly, presuming that Barham dare not enter 
 b}^ the gates, the Tutors had set a man to watch 
 the only practicable scaling-pomt of the garden 
 wall. This man reported that he saw some one, in 
 figure and height like Barham, jump off the wall, 
 dodge him between the trees, and finally escape up 
 Mr. Barham's staircase ; he followed this person as 
 fast as he could, and found Barham's room 
 which a little before had been open and Mr. 
 Barham absent now tenanted, as he perceived 
 by the sound of some one moving within, and 
 the " oak sported," which before had been open, 
 that is that the outer oaken door, which shuts with 
 a spring, was now closed. 
 
 Fourthly, Mr. Barham's boots were found 
 covered with garden mould, and on comparing 
 the boots with the marks under the wall, the 
 foot-print evidence was by no means weak. 
 
 And lastly, if Barham had not been all that 
 evening out of college, nothing could be easier 
 for him than to name those friends in whose 
 rooms he must have spent so many hours.
 
 46 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 By this formidable evidence even Mr. Barham, 
 senior, was convinced, and the son, after his 
 repeated falsehood, was not simply rusticated but 
 ordered to take off his name from the Balliol 
 books.
 
 CHAPTEE in. 
 
 OF CERTAIN DONS OF A PAST DAY, AS QUEER AS 
 THE SAID QUEER UNDERGRADUATES. 
 
 AMONGST the uproarious set of whom I have been 
 speaking, the boating set, or the " Hydro-maniacs," 
 as Short named them, had the worst reputation. 
 Short once wrote to the fathers of some of the 
 more promising of " the Boat," saying that 
 extravagance and midnight uproar called for 
 parental interference to prohibit sons from belong- 
 ing to the crew, indulging in the very obvious and 
 complimentary metaphor that the son " was too 
 valuable to be wrecked on an eight-oared boat." 
 Lewin the late distinguished Chancery Counsel and 
 author of " Lewin on Trusts," one of the Scholars 
 at that time, being famed for athletics, had thoughts 
 of joining the Boat, but soon received*a hint that it 
 would not do. A " Bump supper," on the occasion 
 of a bump or a place gained on a racing night, used 
 to be unusually uproarious with speeches, hurray- 
 ing, and songs various. At Exeter College, too, the 
 Dons held the Boat in equal abhorrence, and con- 
 sidered any man who belonged to it as keeping 
 rather questionable company. Garibaldi's friend,
 
 48 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Col. Peard, who at nineteen years of age weighed 
 fourteen stone, and in the " Tub boats," which pre- 
 ceded the then unknown " outriggers," deemed a 
 powerful ally, was then one of the most celebrated 
 on the river, as was also Bob Lowe, or Whiteheaded 
 Bob, now matured into Lord Sherbrooke, who was 
 the stroke oar of University College boat, and also 
 Pelham of Christchurch, now Bishop of Norwich, 
 who was by far the most distinguished as the best 
 oar in Oxford. I think it was Peard who, one day, 
 jealous of the character of the Exeter boat, took 
 a book of boating rules to Mr. Eichards, the 
 tutor, and showed how, adopting the principle 
 laid down by Horace for athletes and implied in 
 abstinuit vino et venere, they had enacted a set 
 of fines, a five-shilling fine for the former, and 
 a guinea fine for the latter violation both of salus 
 and of mores. Much was his surprise at being 
 met with the rejoinder, "Exactly as I have 
 always maintained ; these rules show plainly and 
 are a written confession of the wild character of 
 the men for whom you can anticipate the necessity 
 for such fines ; no decent men would want such 
 rules." Some men of the Boat were standing in 
 the quad, awaiting the return of their delegate 
 and when the reply was told, Carter, full of Little 
 Go Logic, called out, "I never heard such a
 
 THE BOATING SET. 49 
 
 fallacy. As well reason because there are laws 
 against robbery that all men are thieves." 
 
 The college boat account was strictly kept, and 
 the names of those who had incurred the fines were 
 duly entered, with the sums and the offences set 
 against their names, quite in a business way, but 
 with too little consideration that men would grow 
 older and it is to be hoped more moral, perhaps be- 
 come Dons themselves, and then such a record of a 
 past peccadillo might be found rather incon- 
 venient. This proved true of A. B., afterwards 
 fellow and tutor, whose name, for ten years after 
 at least used to be shown with his offence inono- 
 syllabically expressed and credited with 1 Is., 
 duly paid to every freshman, till at last some 
 friend abstracted the page and destroyed all 
 record of their tutor having perhaps consulted the 
 celebrated Dr. Tuck well, designated by a most 
 apt quotation, mercurialium custos virorum. 
 
 A coUege boat sometimes was purchased by a 
 private subscription amongst the crew who pro- 
 posed it, but generally there was a voluntary rate 
 levied on all the men, it being considered that the 
 boat and its anticipated victories were for the 
 honour of the coUege generally. There were no 
 college boat-houses in those days. Stephen Davis's 
 barge, with a dressing-room on the nearer side of 
 VOL. i. 4
 
 50 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 the river by Folly bridge, and Hall's boat-house 
 on the opposite side, supplied the only accom- 
 modation: but in my day the racing boats 
 numbered only six or seven, and Christchurch, 
 with its Eton and Westminster training, could 
 always be at the head of the river, unless they 
 took it too easily and failed to practise 
 sufficiently. 
 
 If I have spoken much of Mr. Short and often 
 quoted his sententious sayings, it is because " Tom 
 Short," his familiar name with all parties there 
 were two other Shorts, Vowler Short, called " the 
 Growler," and Augustus Short of Christchurch 
 was, more than any other man, part and parcel 
 not only of Trinity College, but for many years of 
 Oxford at large. He survived nearly every one 
 of his Oxford contemporaries, Dr. Eouth of 
 Magdalen, who lived within three weeks of a 
 hundred years, included ; though Dr. Symons of 
 Wadham, yclept "Big Ben," Dr. Marsham of 
 Merton, and Bursar Smith of Trinity, all attaining 
 nearly ninety years, were pretty strong com- 
 petitors in the race of life. The last time I saw 
 Short he said he was seventy-five, and in talking 
 of his college experience he said, " A man's fate 
 all depends on the nursery on the mother, not 
 the father ; the father commonly has little to do
 
 TOM SHORT'S ADVICE. 51 
 
 with the boy till the bent is given and the 
 foundation of character is laid ; all depends on 
 the mother. Of course I am myself too old to 
 marry, but to my young friends I give this solemn 
 caution : 
 
 " Be sure you never marry a fool ; I have long 
 observed that women who are fools swarm with 
 children and, of course, spoil them all." 
 
 This advice struck me as quite original, though 
 I had once heard an old lady, a noted character, 
 and an authoress, say, in speaking of the 
 evangelical clergy, "The lower the church, the 
 larger the family "; but that Short's study and 
 observation in natural history should have 
 resulted in a discovery of the law that the 
 greater the fool (feminine), the larger the family, 
 this was quite a new piece of mento-physical in- 
 formation. 
 
 But there were, in Trinity College in my time, 
 other remarkable characters of a very different 
 kind save that they were quite of the old style and 
 belonging to a now extinct species. Old Ingram, our 
 President, would be as difficult to find in duplicate 
 as Tom Short. And be it remembered, that here 
 I am simply giving my recollections, positive facts, 
 however exceptional, and fact is often stranger 
 
 than fiction. I " nothing extenuate and set down 
 
 4*
 
 52 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 naught in malice " but as to old Ingram, I am no 
 more setting him forth as a typical president than 
 Tom Short as a typical tutor of the day. Both were 
 anomalies and I may say anachronisms, as " men 
 born out of due time," and that time much behind 
 the present day. For that any one in any day 
 within this nineteenth century ever saw the like I 
 very much doubt. 
 
 Dr. Ingram was, in my time, publishing, in 
 parts, his " Memorials of Oxford," and as to any 
 college administration, this seemed to be left entirely 
 in the hands of Mr. Short as Vice-President. You 
 heard of the President when a Common Boom was 
 called for a bill of pains and penalties ; the only 
 other cases of interference I remember are indeed 
 such as are never to be forgotten, and would 
 hardly be believed. 
 
 I once heard of two men on a stage coach, one 
 of whom whispered with much indignation to the 
 other, " This is too bad of these coach proprietors. 
 We are actually paying high fares to sit next to, 
 and in company with, Jack Ketch ! " " Never 
 mind," said the other, " it takes all sorts of people 
 to make -a world." So we may be allowed to 
 record the eccentricities of those designed by 
 nature to break the monotony and fill up the odd 
 corners of life.
 
 STRONG MEASURES. 53 
 
 I must introduce old Ingram as a church 
 militant or physical-force man. In his youthful 
 days he had attained some celebrity as a Cornish 
 wrestler ; and when you marked his breadth of 
 chest and width of hips you would easily believe 
 it. Perhaps he would have pleaded these early 
 habits for being on sundry occasions too ready 
 with his hands. Poor Graham, who as I shall 
 describe was afterwards drowned with Surtees of 
 Exeter by the swamping of a sailing boat, one 
 evening, just under the President's desk in chapel, 
 sank on his side and feel asleep. As the President 
 rose to leave and saw Graham, he stepped round 
 to him, and as he did not move began pounding 
 the side of Graham's head with open palm. 
 Graham sprang up in a maze, and before he knew 
 where he was he felt a tremendous thrust in his 
 back that sent him staggering out of the chapel. 
 
 After witnessing this as a freshman, I began to 
 form peculiar ideas of a President, and soon I had 
 a repetition of the same force of character rather 
 nearer home. I happened to have a wine party, 
 consisting not of the uproarious men described, 
 though one of that set, yclept Count Wratislaw 
 this ancestral Hungarian title, long since dropped 
 by his family, we would not let drop at college 
 entered about nine o'clock, rather the worse for
 
 54 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 a wine party he had just left. He had a French 
 horn in his hand, and this noisy instrument he 
 began to blow, and a few minutes after the door 
 was thrown violently open and in burst the 
 President. All was consternation. "Cut," cried 
 our friend Charlie, and in a moment all had 
 rushed headlong out of the room, awaiting the 
 result in the darker corners of the lower passage 
 and staircase, and leaving me with Wratislaw in 
 a state of heavy stupidity and wholly unconscious 
 of what had happened, for the President was 
 standing behind his chair, " I have been annoyed, 
 sir, by that horrid trumpet for " 
 
 " Poo-oo-oo," blew Wratislaw. 
 
 " I have been annoyed, I say " (snatching it out 
 of his hand), "by this trumpet for the last 
 fortnight, and -" 
 
 " A sure sign it wasn't me, for I've only been 
 up a week." 
 
 "What! Giving me your impertinence, sir, 
 indeed ! I'll beat it about jour head, if you dare 
 talk so to me." 
 
 As he said this, he held the heavy and sharp- 
 edged French horn in so menacing a manner to 
 Wratislaw's unprotected scalp, standing right over 
 him, that I instinctively placed myself between 
 them.
 
 BEFORE THE PRESIDENT. 55 
 
 Ingram, carrying off the horn, soon left the 
 room, ordering us both to call on him the next 
 morning. 
 
 To me he said very little ; he had heard that 
 Wratislaw had been but a few minutes in my 
 rooms. With Wratislaw, the following was the 
 little confab : 
 
 " For your conduct last night, sir, I suppose I 
 can do nothing less than send you home." 
 
 "I have no home, sir." 
 
 " Well, go back to your father." 
 
 " I have no father, sir." 
 
 " Then go to your mother." 
 
 "I have no mother, sir." 
 
 " What, no father and no mother either at your 
 time of life ? " 
 
 " No, sir, and I never had any, that is " 
 
 " Never had a father or mother ! What do you 
 mean, sir? Why, you surely don't mean to say 
 you came into the world like Adam and Eve, full 
 grown ? " 
 
 Here he began to relax and laugh a little at his 
 own quaint illustration. 
 
 " I was going to add, sir, none that I ever knew 
 they died in my infancy." 
 
 " And so you came here to be your own master. 
 This will never do you have been most irregular
 
 56 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 ever since you came, missing lectures, and absent 
 from chapel often, and knocking in late 
 very unlike what you ought to be in every respect. 
 Why, see, here's a college cap," he seized and 
 shook it, and as the broken board in the top of it 
 rattled ridiculously, he shook it again ; " Yes, and 
 I heard you brought a live animal into college in 
 a sack at twelve o'clock at night. Go, sir ! go 
 I can't say just now what I shall do in your case." 
 
 Wratislaw said : "I heard no more of it, but 
 when I found he knew of the badger story, I 
 thought all was up with me." 
 
 Wratislaw, just before, had bought a badger of 
 Hoskings of Cowley, and brought it in a sack into 
 college. But the difficulty was to know what 
 to do with it for the night. Briggs was so 
 unacquainted with badgers that he let him 
 empty the sack into his cupboard. Little sleep 
 was there that night for any one near, the creature 
 scratched so to get free ; and next day, when the 
 cupboard doer was opened, every man jumped on 
 to a chair for fear of teeth fixed in his legs. At 
 last Hoskings, as before arranged, came, caught 
 up the badger by the tail, as he alone knew how, 
 replaced it in the sack, and took it off to 
 Bullingdon, for all the dogs of all the scum of the 
 slums to chase it.
 
 A SUMMARY PROCEEDING. 57 
 
 But of the President, in his physical-force 
 character, Tom Crippts, the college confectioner, 
 had a tale to tell a tale so well remembered, 
 that, forty-five years after date, little Walker's 
 successor, the college porter, related it truthfully 
 to me, an instance of most correct tradition. 
 
 The extravagance of our breakfast parties and 
 supper parties had been very great, so it was 
 arranged that we should have cold meat for 
 breakfast, as we always had for supper, from the 
 college buttery, and then there could be no reason 
 that anything of the sort should be more ex- 
 pensively ordered from Crippts and Co. This 
 law was sometimes broken, as the Dons knew, and 
 they were all at this time on the alert. One 
 morning, the President, just by the iron gates in 
 Broad Street, met Tom Crippts with a large and 
 suspicious-looking hand-basket, stopped him and 
 asked what it contained. 
 
 " Only a little toast and muffins, sir." 
 
 " Pull off the cover." 
 
 This was done. 
 
 "You infamous liar! Do you call this toast 
 and muffins ? " so giving the basket a whirl, he 
 sent kidneys, cutlets and broiled chickens flying 
 into the little plantation on the left. 
 
 But any noise in quad, was at any time liable to
 
 58 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 draw old Ingram from his lair. No doubt, for a 
 busy and studious man, and devoted antiquary, 
 a lot of thoughtless, noisy j^ouths must have been 
 very irritating. Once a noisy party in the quad, 
 near his door, and not far from his study window, 
 were cracking a tandem whip. Out rushed 
 Ingram, snatched the whip from one man's hand, 
 and flipped and flanked about right and left most 
 vigorously, while the men ran screeching with 
 laughter away. 
 
 After one of the worst of these vigorous sallies 
 of the President, Short tried to smooth things off, 
 and to persuade the indignant party that his 
 offended honour would not suffer in public 
 estimation by any means the same as if half 
 as much had been done by a younger man. 
 
 Short was one of the best of tutors to keep the 
 men in order. He was so certain and methodical 
 in his ways ; to escape his vigilance was not easy, 
 and the only safe excuse when found out was to 
 be frank and open with him. Certainly he was 
 rather pedagogic, from early training. He told 
 me that after he was elected Scholar of Trinity he 
 had leave of absence for a year to complete a 
 mastership at Eugby, and at lecture he showed a 
 degree of grammatical accuracy and a certainty 
 in his familiar negative, " you're wrong," not
 
 AN ODDITY. 59 
 
 common with other tutors. For tuition requires 
 practice ; you begin to question your own know- 
 ledge when first you find yourself in a position 
 requiring you to pronounce a decided negative 
 and to correct others. Isaac Williams was a man 
 of more taste and an elegant scholar, yet when a 
 man at lecture made a mistake, he seemed to 
 hesitate and to want nerve or certainty to con- 
 tradict him. 
 
 Mr. Homer was a celebrated tutor at Eugby in 
 Short's time, and his son, Philip Homer, was con- 
 fided to Short's care at Trinity, but Philip was a 
 strange creature. Once Short said at lecture : 
 "Mr. Homer, that is not the way your father 
 would have rendered that." " My father, sir," 
 was the reply, " was a puzzle-headed sort of man." 
 This utterance was received by Short with a 
 solemn pause, but Philip was called back after 
 lecture. The truth was, the son was crack- 
 brained, and what seemed oddities at college soon 
 developed into something more to be lamented. 
 One vacation Philip went to stay at the hotel at 
 Capel Curig, in North Wales. There his strange 
 ways attracted the attention of some good gentle- 
 man, who watched over him, and treated him 
 kindly, while he communicated with Philip's 
 friends. One day Philip started with some bread
 
 60 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 and wine, as he said, to administer the Sacrament 
 on the top of Snowdon. As he did not return by 
 the evening, men were sent in search of him, but it 
 was only after a week that a shepherd's dog led 
 the searchers to a kind of natural alcove, and 
 there lay poor Philip on a bed of fern which he 
 had made for himself, and with his feet in the 
 pockets of the skirts of his coat, which he had 
 torn off apparently to give his feet warmth. He 
 had no doubt lost his way in a dense fog, and 
 perished from cold. 
 
 In 1843 I visited the hotel, where I found the 
 sad story had by no means lost its interest ; and 
 the old waiter led me to Philip's grave, then 
 covered with a large altar-formed monument, to 
 one " who died much to be lamented in 1835." 
 
 Thirty years after, in another Welsh tour, I 
 sought the same spot ; but in that well-remem- 
 bered corner all now was level and plain turf, 
 and sheep were feeding. Etiam periere ruince ! 
 The explanation readily occurred to me ; grave- 
 stones are stolen like other things and with less 
 chance of discovery. 
 
 While I was at St. Mary's, Barnstaple, a friend, 
 in turning up his hearthstone, close to the 
 churchyard, read, " Sacred to the memory, &c.," 
 and the gravedigger let me into a secret that
 
 GLOOMY REFLECTIONS. 61 
 
 it was a common practice to take Smith's 
 old headstone to cover over Jones' new 
 grave. And in the beautiful Bath abbey, asking 
 the sexton if there was room for many more, I 
 was informed : " Why, sir, sometimes we're 
 forced to make room, it may be after twenty 
 years or so, and when the family have .left the 
 place, for then we think they've had enough on't." 
 
 Still as to Philip Homer's grave, I felt no little 
 at the reflection that one with whom I had spent 
 so many friendly hours, and who had amused me 
 much by his oddities, and with whom I truly 
 sympathized, was already so ruthlessly blotted out 
 of the land of the living the last trace gone of 
 where he once had been. 
 
 " This way madness lies," says King Lear ; and 
 I think I have had, among my friends, rather 
 more than the average on this broad highway. I 
 agree with Horace that all men are mad : it is 
 only a question of degree, and Dr. Johnson would 
 apply that name very extensively when he says it 
 applies for the time to all persons with whom 
 imagination predominates over reason. Philip 
 Homer was only one of three men at college, 
 counted queer and eccentric, who afterwards 
 went raving mad. 
 
 " What an odd fellow is Fowler ! " men said,
 
 62 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 " so fond of pugilism." He one day met an Irish 
 beggar and offered him half-a-crown for one blow 
 at his face, and a blow that so astonished the poor 
 fellow that he would have run away without his 
 money had not a friend gone after him. Some 
 years after, when ordained to a curacy in Wales, 
 Fowler was still more eccentric. His first lesson 
 for the morning service, Sunday after Sunday, was 
 always from Genesis : when asked why he did not 
 adhere to the table of lessons, he said he had a 
 fancy to ground his parishioners well at first 
 start ! 
 
 No wonder that such a man should have ended 
 in a barred room, with a strait- waistcoat. 
 
 Luckie was another of the so-called eccentric 
 school. He gave up for his degree twenty-four 
 books, more by half than the best men proposed 
 for the highest honours, and took his seat in the 
 schools, reading a common cram book the very 
 sight of which, as the examiner took it from his 
 hands, to say nothing of the impropriety of taking 
 any book, was enough to prove an alibi of all sound 
 knowledge. As poor Luckie knew very little, 
 and as he floundered over one passage after 
 another, he was told, "Mr. Luckie, we like 
 candidates to bring up a few books and to know 
 something. You have made a very common
 
 DANGER OF PRACTICAL JOKES. 63 
 
 mistake ; you have brought up many books and 
 know nothing." As to taking any class after this, 
 it was quite out of the question. 
 
 Luckie just scraped through. 
 
 " Mr. Luckie," said Short, " what could have 
 induced you to give up so many books ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, I found it very hard to choose ; I 
 knew as much of one as of another." 
 
 " At that rate you might have named the whole 
 Bodleian," was the reply. 
 
 The explanation of 'all this folly was lunacy, 
 developed and declared a few years after. Yes, 
 and not a few men, if they had any feeling, must 
 have been ashamed of the part they once had 
 taken in teasing a weak and nervous creature, as 
 if he were ridiculous and fair game, when they 
 found at last that it was a case to be pitied of 
 incipient disease. This teasing and irritation was 
 carried so far that Short once detained me after 
 lecture and said he wished to speak to me as one 
 he believed kindly disposed to Luckie that 
 Luckie was constitutionally weak and nervous ; 
 and the rough play and tricks to which he was 
 exposed, Dr. Tuckwell had assured him, was 
 confirming a certain nervous tendency, and was 
 most injurious to his constitution. 
 
 I replied, " I have no doubt, sir, you anticipate
 
 64 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 my reply. Luckie has acute sensibilities and good 
 feeling, and yet he has unfortunately fallen among 
 a comparatively rough set. I will advise Luckie 
 quietly to draw off from them without exciting 
 resentment by any downright cut, and I will 
 speak to the men in question privately, and draw 
 attention to Dr. Tuckwell's opinion, and let them 
 see the injury they are doing Luckie by what 
 they only mean for jest and play." Short said this 
 was exactly what he desired. But it was all too late ; 
 Luckie became gradually worse and demented, 
 and a few years after he died of a nervous fever. 
 
 But, short of mental disease, there is usually 
 some poor, brainless creature at Oxford, the 
 victim of many plucks, and quite the notable 
 character of his college and of his day. Such 
 a man was one w r e called the Bishop of Pembroke, 
 for that was his style from the cut of his coat and 
 queer hat, and Pembroke the college he so highly 
 honoured. As often as he went up for his little- 
 go the schools were crowded. Often have I 
 blamed myself for going, on one occasion, with 
 my old college chum Le Breton, father of Mrs. 
 Langtry, a man with the least possible command of 
 countenance, so keen was his sense of the 
 ridiculous. Luckily we were seated nearest the 
 door. The subject was logic, and the question
 
 A QUEER CANDIDATE. 65 
 
 was about the conversion of propositions, the 
 principle of which, remember, was to alter the 
 form while you preserved the sense. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Johnson, convert this proposition, 
 4 Cassar conquered Pompey.' ' 
 
 " Yes, sir, ' Pompey conquered Csesar.' ' : 
 
 Had I been by myself I could have been quite 
 serious ; but Le Breton was convulsed with 
 laughter, and this set me off. The examiner 
 made an attempt at indignant reproof, but could 
 hardly resist the contagion of the ludicrous. 
 " Half-uttered accents hung upon his tongue," of 
 which we were not slow to take advantage, and 
 burst out of the schools and ran away, our ex- 
 plosive laughter, as we were told, being audible 
 till we were quite clear of the quadrangle. It 
 was the manner of the strange creature which 
 was so hard to resist. 
 
 In this examination, as is commonly the case, 
 where examiners know they have some hard- 
 striving man, but invitd Minervd, that is, all 
 against the grain, they were all sympathy, and 
 one of them said, " Pray sit down, Mr. Johnson, 
 and compose yourself." 
 
 " I am not at all nervous," was the innocent reply, 
 "it is nothing in the world but my ignorance." 
 
 I am afraid he never graduated after all. 
 VOL. i. 5
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF CERTAIN OLD FEIENDS SOME OF WHOM HAVE 
 
 " ACHIEVED GREATNESS," AND OTHERS WHO HAVE 
 HAD "GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM." 
 
 As to the old friend I have mentioned, not only 
 had he a fine sense of the ridiculous, but he was 
 apt to get into rather ridiculous positions. 
 The very peculiar position in which he found 
 himself one fine morning was rather a case in 
 point. Taunton, the nephew of a judge who had, 
 at the Oxford assizes, sentenced a man to be 
 hanged for rick-burning, came running, about 
 eight o'clock, into my friend's room, and said : 
 
 " Come along, come, I can let you into a good 
 thing ; I have a ticket to see the man hanged." 
 
 Away they both rushed, threaded the mob to 
 the jail gates and presented their order. 
 
 " This way, then, gentlemen, this way," said the 
 warder, "only just in time through the chapel 
 here up those steps," and they found themselves, 
 not as they supposed, only on some commanding 
 height, but to their great surprise and that of the 
 crowd assembled, there they stood two Col- 
 legians, in cap and gown on the top of the
 
 THE FATHER OF MRS. LANGTRY. 67 
 
 turreted gate, by the side of Mr. Calcraft and 
 the poor creature to be hanged. 
 
 " How came you there ? " said the Dean of 
 Pembroke. 
 
 " Quite by accident, sir." 
 
 " By what possible accident could a man slip 
 on to the top of a jail and by the side of the gallows ? 
 A strange accident indeed ! " 
 
 All! Le Breton many years the venerable 
 Dean of Jersey at college a man of much taste 
 and strong memory. When ordained he proved 
 an eloquent preacher, a good speaker, and with a 
 talent for recitation, part of which gifts have 
 descended on his daughter, a lady of world-wide 
 fame, Mrs. Langtry, " Some men achieve great- 
 ness and some have greatness thrust upon them." 
 We may add, some inherit greatness : but in this 
 case it is all the other way ; the stream flows 
 back upon the fountain's head and the sire is 
 made even yet more famous from his child. Fame 
 indeed ! One day, at Lord's Cricket Ground, at 
 the Eton and Harrow match, there was some 
 stir at the gate as if some distinguished person 
 was coming : " Who is it, to cause this excite- 
 ment ?" I asked. "Either the Princess of Wales, 
 or Mrs. Langtry," was the reply ; "it can be no 
 one else," Well does Le Breton's child deserve her 
 
 5*
 
 68 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 fame. Here was a young lady, drawn from com- 
 parative obscurity first of all, by no forwardness 
 on her own part, into the highest circles of 
 London society. Idolized and flattered, but not 
 spoilt. Made the pivot for there is always one 
 on which the world's folly for the day shall 
 turn. A little later, by her husband's losses, she 
 feels reverse of fortune ; and, of course, soon finds 
 that no offence against fashionable society is half 
 so unpardonable as proving poor. Not spoilt, did 
 I say ? No, here's the proof. By much laborious 
 study and wonderful force of character, she 
 qualifies for the stage. The night of trial comes ; 
 she dares the criticism of London and the certain 
 opposition of the dramatic press. At once, from 
 this single sample of her power, one of the first 
 actresses of the day exclaims in my hearing : " As 
 to succeeding, it is a success ; she has already 
 done what takes us years." Having carried the 
 war into the provinces, she goes single-handed 
 to America, and in three years, by her astonishing- 
 energy, builds up a fortune and regains the 
 independence from which she had fallen by no 
 fault of hers. 
 
 Well, but her father could stand hard work too. 
 After a good day's work, to my lodgings in Holy- 
 well he used to come at four o'clock, and we read,
 
 HOW OLD FRIENDS PART. 69 
 
 till ten o'clock, with one half-hour only for a hasty 
 meal of chops and pancakes, the whole of Aristotle's 
 Ehetoric in six readings. He was at that time 
 reading with one noted tutor, and I with another ; 
 at one time with how times are changed ! the 
 present Lord Chancellor Selborne, who at Oxford, 
 as now, was the foremost man of his day, and 
 afterwards with the late Bishop of London, a man 
 with the best head for science of any of his time, 
 then at Pembroke College ; and thus Le Breton 
 and I used to make a sort of joint stock of what 
 were called the crotchets or best things learnt 
 from our respective Coaches. 
 
 My friend was ultimately fellow of Exeter. I 
 met him years after. Yes, only after many years : 
 and this exemplifies a great peculiarity of the little 
 world of Oxford life. Oxford draws, as to a 
 centre, many hundreds of men who otherwise 
 might never have seen each other. Friendships 
 are formed. The most attached friends disperse 
 and radiate north, south, east and west, and the 
 friends who for twelve terms were rarely a day 
 apart, never meet for years, if ever again. One 
 casual and passing word I had with my old friend, 
 I remember, the only time in thirty years, and he 
 said he had been " Bear leading," a word in his 
 case most descriptive. " Such a rough and un-
 
 70 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 civilized young cub," he said, "it were hard in- 
 deed to match. I did my best to cultivate some 
 taste and power of observation ; but after seeing 
 him put his head into St. Peter's at Eome, turn 
 his nose up and back out again, and after seeing 
 him blindly smoking and day-dreaming, and say- 
 ing he saw nothing to look at where the Eighi and 
 Pilatus cast their dark shadows over the Lake of 
 Lucerne, I gave him up." " Don't you think," he 
 said, " it is a palpable misnomer, as to the bills of 
 mortality, to speak of so many million Souls, as if 
 they all had one a-piece, when, as in the case of 
 this mere animal, daily experience contradicts it ? " 
 This bear-leading used to be another pet occu- 
 pation, much desired by some men just after 
 taking their degree, partly because the parental 
 purse about that time can be drawn on no longer 
 for arrears of college debts, and partly because to 
 see foreign parts at some one else's expense was a 
 temptation indeed. Instead of sentence of rusti- 
 cation I have known private advice given to a 
 father to keep his son away from college for a 
 year, to entrust him ostensibly to a tutor, but 
 really to a man to travel with him to keep him 
 out of mischief, and to give time for dissolute 
 companions to leave. There was a chance for 
 that bear-leader to take him abroad to enlarge
 
 THE TRAVELLING TUTOR. 71 
 
 his mind, of which he commonly had but little, 
 and to keep him out of mischief, though that is 
 found everywhere, and as to travelling, the youth 
 too often happens, 
 
 " To shape his old course in a country new." 
 
 But the appointment of travelling tutor was too 
 desirable to be easy to obtain. The more common 
 way to raise the wind in Oxford, after taking a 
 good degree, was by "private coaching." This 
 was of course rather of the nature of a specula- 
 tion for there was the certain expense of con- 
 tinued Oxford residence, and much uncertainty as 
 to pupils. 
 
 Few men with anything less than first-class 
 honours had much chance of succeeding, and 
 unless socially and widely popular, with all the 
 connection to be derived from a public-school 
 acquaintance, a man found it difficult to obtain 
 a number sufficiently constant to be remunerative. 
 Still, the temptation to make from 200 to 400 
 a year or more for working only half the year 
 for Oxford terms are little more was so great, 
 that when once it was proposed to appoint as 
 examiners no men who took pupils, it was 
 observed that there were too few men without 
 pupils qualified to be examiners. I could name 
 a Lord Chancellor who, to start with a purse,
 
 72 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 was obliged to sacrifice time most valuable to 
 him, especially for about eighteen months after 
 taking his degree, and before he could reside in 
 Lincoln's Inn. Another, Lord Chancellor West- 
 bury, lay under the same disadvantage, for some 
 time detained as tutor at Wadham College. Lord 
 Sherbrooke, was, I think, nearly six years tutor 
 and little-go examiner before he left for the 
 Australian Bar, where one of his first cases was 
 the defence of his old Winchester schoolfellow, 
 Knatchbull, for murder. 
 
 Knatchbull's was a life of crime. At Winches- 
 ter he bore a very unpromising character. He 
 went into the navy and there embezzled a chrono- 
 meter, and laid the blame on an officer, who was 
 dismissed for negligence. Having been entrusted 
 with the care of chronometers taken to sea to 
 be tried and timed, this ill-used officer, with a 
 keen eye for every chronometer, espied the lost 
 one in a shop in Holborn, and traced the sale of 
 it to Knatchbull, who was tried and transported 
 for the offence. In Australia he was at one time 
 the assigned servant to a friend of mine ; and 
 before that, while in the barracks, another of my 
 friends officially employed there said, he remem- 
 bered Knatchbull once came to him and volun- 
 teered for the office of flogger, to accompany him
 
 OXFORD TUTORS. 73 
 
 daily on his rounds to administer lashes, as the 
 poor wretches were sentenced on daily complaints, 
 and a most savage flogger he was. Having 
 obtained a ticket of leave, he was kindly treated 
 by an old woman, whom he poisoned to possess 
 himself of her supposed riches ; all he obtained 
 was three-and-sixpence ! Mr. Lowe tried to prove 
 insanity, but failed, and Knatchbull was hanged. 
 
 " Mr. Lowe," said my friend Kendall, " was the 
 cleverest man I have ever read with," He was so 
 near-sighted he seemed to depend very little on 
 his sight and to know all his books by heart. He 
 had the widest Oxford acquaintance of any man 
 of my day. The late W. Mitchell of Hertford Col- 
 lege, much senior to Mr. Lowe and several times 
 examiner, was the most distinguished of all Oxford 
 " Coaches," that is, he could boast of the greatest 
 number of successful candidates for honours 
 among his pupils. He said the best man he ever 
 examined was the late Honourable C. Twistleton, 
 a Scholar of Trinity in 1828. He said "Mine 
 was hard work : with a man like Liddell (now 
 Dean of Christchurch), my lecture was like an 
 hour of pleasant conversation, but sometimes I 
 have counted the very minutes on my watch, so 
 bored with the stupidity of a pupil." 
 
 One of the latter style of pupils must have been
 
 74 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Joe Burdon, whose idea of logic encouraged him 
 mightily as to his chance of passing. He said he 
 reasoned by rules of logic. His syllogism was 
 this. " No man has yet been plucked who read 
 with Mitchell in his present set of rooms. I have 
 read with Mitchell in his present set of rooms. 
 Ergo, I shall not be plucked." A proved fallacy, 
 in more senses than one. Other Coaches had 
 reputation rather for pass-men than for class-men. 
 Among these Clifton of Worcester was most 
 celebrated. I remember one day meeting Woodley 
 of Worcester hastening to be in time for his 
 examination, appointed to come on after two 
 o'clock. He had been listening all the morning 
 to the divinity examinations of other candidates, 
 and as he anticipated many of the same questions, 
 he had run off to Clifton for a final cram. Clifton 
 had before strongly urged him not to go up, 
 disliking to have any plucked men to his account, 
 but Woodley was lucky in having some of the 
 same questions and passed. 
 
 Private Coaching at Oxford was very hard work. 
 A young beginner soon finds that in order to 
 teach, he must himself learn ; that is, learn a 
 little more accuracy than he already has attained, 
 and this must extend to every book and every 
 part of the book that his pupil proposes to read.
 
 THE LONG VACATION TUTOR. 75 
 
 A tutor usually desired to take six pupils ; that 
 is, to lecture six hours a day and to pay minute 
 attention, with earnest talk with six fresh men, 
 on various subjects, six full hours. If you add 
 to this work some more hours as a daily prepara- 
 tion, no wonder you heard, as I did, in reading 
 with " Jackson of Pembroke," afterwards Bishop of 
 London, that his head was in a whirl, and that 
 the vacation came just in time to save him. He 
 said, " My head is giving way ; the truth is I 
 have done too much." Most tutors, however, 
 have to commence with smaller numbers, and so 
 become seasoned by degrees. 
 
 Some men presume that having taken a first 
 class they are fit, all at once, to lecture as a 
 matter of course. With a man of this confident 
 character a party of my friends, one long 
 vacation, went down to Lynton, and before long 
 this so-called tutor was floored with a passage of 
 Thucydides, and after repeated instances of his 
 incapacity, his pupils dispensed with his services, 
 and wrote for another tutor. This man made 
 a great mistake ; he ought to have read early 
 and late and prepared his lectures till he was used 
 to his work. 
 
 No man was more familiar with his books or 
 found the work easier than Clifton of Worcester ;
 
 76 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 but he was glad after a time to take a living and 
 retire from the fatigue of tuition. 
 
 Most men in choice of Coaches gave a 
 preference to a tutor who had been an examiner 
 in the schools, because supposed to be initiated in 
 all the mysteries and the so-called crotchets of 
 examiners. It was too generally believed that, 
 there were in Aristotle's Ethics mysteries which 
 only a certain set of tutors could reveal. After 
 all, the chief assistance a tutor can render a 
 candidate for honours is by directing his reading, 
 and carrying on a system of daily examination. 
 Very little can be done in filling another man's 
 head. This he must be taught to do for himself. 
 Education consists in drawing out rather than in 
 forcing in ; formation not in-formation. The 
 outcry against cramming is absurd. Cramming 
 implies mind to be crammed, and a man who can 
 show the accurate knowledge which examinations 
 require for the time, however short, has a better 
 head than one who cannot. The best mind, like 
 the best gun, is one that carries straight to the 
 mark. Knowledge displayed in examinations is 
 the test of this power, however evanescent, to be 
 regarded only as the ammunition. 
 
 No reading man in any time thought there was 
 much use in the college lectures. The worst part
 
 GETTING UP IN THE WORLD. 77 
 
 of it was that the lectures broke in on all that 
 time, from ten o'clock till one, which is most 
 valuable for private study ; and with the best 
 scholars, I am sure that for the morning lost the 
 lecture was but a poor compensation. One 
 advantage I duly estimate in college lectures, 
 namely, the opportunity afforded in a class of 
 from sixteen to twenty men of comparing oneself 
 with others. Self-knowledge is no small part of 
 college education. To have read privately with 
 the then celebrated Eoundell Palmer, the best 
 classic of his day, and also with Jackson, then 
 one of the first men in science, I have ever 
 considered of lifelong benefit. 
 
 Jackson was eminently an instance, and to some 
 extent Eoundell Palmer also, of the way a clever 
 man may make the University the stepping stone 
 to the highest preferment in life. Jackson was 
 indebted to Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peter- 
 borough, for tuition for which he could ill afford 
 to pay. 
 
 Dr. Jeune's early fortunes had been little more 
 promising. He told my friend, Dr. H , that he 
 had carried sacks of flour to his father's mill. 
 Each of these embryo bishops took a first class ; 
 this led to a connection for pupils at Oxford, in 
 the first place, and after some years testimonials
 
 78 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 were accumulated for what is a very rich prize for 
 any young men Dr. Jeune became head-master 
 of Birmingham Foundation School, and Jackson 
 of Islington Proprietary College. 
 
 And why are we said to have too often a set 
 of Schoolmaster Bishops ? Principally because 
 the best men of their day are promoted to the 
 great schools, and they have a fine opportunity of 
 making connections when there. Islington College, 
 however, was not of so high a class, nor could 
 Jackson be said to have, like Palmer, distanced all 
 compeers at the University. Jackson became 
 known as a most earnest and persuasive preacher 
 at Muswell Hill. If persuasiveness is the highest 
 point in oratory, Jackson had that gift ; the rest 
 of his oratory was little indeed. But he was a 
 moving preacher. Lord Aberdeen and the Earl of 
 Derby heard him Sunday after Sunday at St. James', 
 Piccadilly. Both these ministers marked him for a 
 bishopric, though Lord Aberdeen first had the 
 opportunity. Sydney Smith used to speak of 
 Greek Play bishops adverting to Blomfield and 
 Monk and of their " orthodox views of the 
 middle verb." So many years has scholarship 
 and learning led to the lawn. 
 
 Eoundell Palmer of Trinity College was not 
 only the best classic of his day ; his Latin Prize
 
 A MISHAP IN THE SCHOOLS. 79 
 
 Poem and his Latin Essay on " Clientship among 
 the Eomans " were among the very best in the 
 whole collection. He also won the Newdigate 
 Prize for the best English Poem, as also the 
 Ireland scholarship and a first class. But 
 strange to say, it became a humorous remark 
 that the plucked men of the University owed 
 him a present for taking away the disgrace 
 from plucks for ever after. Palmer took up 
 three books of Euclid for his Little Go, instead 
 of Logic you might take either and as he 
 did not intend to pursue mathematical studies, 
 he drew the line rather too close, was deemed 
 deficient and failed ! I well remember hearing 
 his examination, and anticipating No testamur. 
 " Never mind," said Short, " he can write better 
 Latin than any one of the examiners." It was 
 believed that his well-known abilities prejudiced 
 him : and that the examiners had determined to 
 make an example of some man whose deficiency 
 could not fairly claim allowance. 
 
 There was no man in College more respected 
 than Eoundell Palmer, none of whom higher 
 expectations in life were formed. When I read 
 lately of the death of my old friend Gunner, 
 Eecorder for Southampton, I thought of the 
 very words he once uttered, "Whoever lives
 
 80 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 fifty years will see Palmer Lord Chancellor." 
 Gunner did live to see it. The Eldon Testi- 
 monial, 200 a year, held for three years, was 
 awarded always without examination to the 
 man who had won most prizes and honours, 
 Palmer took this as a matter of course. 
 
 The winners of Chancellor's Prizes have in nine 
 cases out of fifty-four found their way to the 
 peerage : The Earl of Eldon, Lord Sidmouth, 
 Burgess Bishop of Salisbury, Lord Tenterden, 
 Phillpott Bishop of Exeter, Copleston Bishop of 
 Llandaff, Mant Bishop of Down and Connor, 
 Whateley Archbishop of Dublin and Shirley 
 Bishop of Sodor and Man. We may add 
 Wilson and Heber Bishops of Calcutta, Sir 
 John Taylor Coleridge and Dean Milman. 
 
 At Magdalen at that time the deed of trust as 
 regards fellowships and demiships was not con- 
 strued to mean that these prizes should be given 
 to the best scholars. Founders of scholarships no 
 doubt intended generally to help poor scholars. 
 In the progress of time school education became 
 general, and that of the highest order to qualify for 
 competition was expensive, consequently to award 
 such pecuniary help and partially free education 
 to the best scholars who came to Oxford was vir- 
 tually to give a bonus most unnecessarily to those
 
 WONDERFUL MEMORY. 81 
 
 who were probably rich and who least required 
 it. Still any judicious selection of poor scholars 
 is little likely to remain long in force. You can 
 judge of scholarship, but not of poverty. Election 
 must be made either by examination or by 
 favour ; so examination or the hated " Com- 
 petition Wallah" is the better of the two. 
 Magdalen fellowships were so generally given 
 by favour and friendship that the usual 
 examination was a farce. Palmer, however, 
 was advised to stand on his merits. When the 
 fellows came to the election they were about 
 to supersede him in favour of a mere pass-man, 
 when one of the fellows rose and said : " We 
 are carrying this too far. The eyes of all Oxford 
 are on us to see what we will do. Here is a man 
 who would be an honour to the college." This 
 appeal prevailed ; Palmer was not to be denied. 
 
 As to examinations in Euclid, I can recount 
 three instances of wonderful memory. Two 
 superior men, both gaining second-class honours 
 one was the celebrated Canon Macmullen, so well- 
 known by the Hampden controversy assured 
 me that they learned their books of Euclid by 
 heart without understanding the least of the 
 reasoning. That such stuff as "If the angle 
 A B C is equal to the angle D E F, &c.," 
 VOL. i. 6
 
 82 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 could be learned by any one, how strange that 
 two men of proved ability as well as good 
 memory should not see the meaning of what 
 young school-boys commonly understand. In re- 
 lating this to Professor Eogers, a man of much 
 experience as an examiner, he said, "I can 
 easily believe it. With a candidate who gave 
 up two books of Euclid, I once observed that 
 the proposition was right by my figure, but he 
 had circles for triangles, and his figure absurdly 
 wrong. When I called his attention to it, he 
 said, ' If you please, sir, I did not think we 
 were required to learn the pictures ' ! " 
 
 Palmer's schoolfellow Lowe was as widely 
 known as any man of his day. " He would have 
 been elected scholar of Trinity," said Mr. Bursar 
 Smith, " but we perceived he was too near-sighted 
 for the duty of marking the names in chapel." 
 He was first and foremost at the Union Debating 
 Society, and with a few others seceded and formed 
 a club of their own. This gave occasion to a 
 poem in Homeric Greek called Uniomachia ; it 
 has recently been republished, but has no great 
 merit ; the idea of this had been taken from a 
 composition by Lowe, in Latin verse mixed with 
 English, called Macaronic poetry. It was written 
 in 1833, on the occasion of the visit of the Duchess
 
 LORD SHERBROOKES VERSES. 83 
 
 of Kent with the (then) Princess Victoria, escorted 
 by Sir John Conroy. This piece of classical 
 humour was much praised, and copies sent to 
 every part of the world where Oxford men were 
 to be found ; it began as follows : 
 
 Dicite Pierides Musse mihi dicite Kentce 
 Dutchess&m, Princesscpae simul Victoria, nostro 
 Singntur versu, Conroyaunsque triumphus 
 Et quam shout&T\int Undergraduates atque Magistri 
 Et quantum dederit Vice Chancellor ipse refreshment. 
 
 Sir John Conroy was made Doctor of Civil Law, 
 which was still further hit at in the line, 
 
 Non Lincoln's Inn ilium non Intima Templa tulerunt. 
 
 After this some good Greek Homeric verses came 
 from the pen of Dr. Scott, now Dean of Eochester. 
 Macbride was then well-known as President of 
 Magdalen Hall, now called Hertford College. 
 They did well to change the name in my day 
 suggestive of all that was low, vulgar and 
 profligate truly the refuge of the destitute 
 destitute of every desirable quality ; but with 
 change of name, and under my old friend Mitchell, 
 a very different state of things prevailed. Well, 
 this Dr. Macbride's name was aptly classified as 
 Parthenopasus. (Parthenos in Greek means a 
 bride.) 
 
 I remember a strange adventure of Lowe while 
 an undergraduate. Old Allan Park was presiding 
 
 6*
 
 84 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 as judge at the Oxford assizes, and with his usual 
 testiness was complaining of every little noise 
 made in court. Great was the confusion, and 
 very sheepish were the looks of the clerk who 
 represented the sheriff, when at last Park called 
 out, " Don't stand there, sir, with your hands in 
 your pockets ; go down at once among this ill- 
 behaved crowd and keep order, or I'll commit 
 you!" 
 
 Not long after, the said officer thought he had 
 done something in proof of his energy. He stood 
 forward and said, "My lord, a man has been 
 apprehended for making a disturbance in court 
 and assaulting a constable." 
 
 "Let him stand up here," said the judge. 
 Immediately a shining white head was seen 
 threading its way through the crowd, with the 
 alleged assaulted officer in charge of its owner ; 
 when a barrister quickly stood on a bench near 
 and said just loud enough for me to hear, "My 
 lord, this is a gentleman of University College, 
 one of the most distinguished undergraduates in 
 Oxford." 
 
 " Yes, I daresay," said the judge, in a tone and 
 manner which shewed how he meant to act ; and 
 then he said roughly to the officer, 
 
 " Well, sir, what have you to say ? "
 
 A SCENE " J^ COURT. 85 
 
 " Please, my lord, the prisoner was trying to 
 get into this part of the court, and I prevented 
 him." 
 
 " Prevented him, indeed ! What right had you 
 to prevent him ? Don't you see he is one of the 
 University gentlemen? There, you have been 
 admitting all the tag-rag, and those who ought to 
 be admitted you keep out." 
 
 "As to the assault, my lord," said Lowe, "since 
 he is an old man and I am a young one, I should 
 be ashamed to be supposed to have assaulted him. 
 He made a grab at me as I was passing, and as I 
 eluded him he fell." 
 
 " Sir, you are discharged," whereupon Lowe 
 improved the occasion and made for the best seat 
 in the court, which an officer at once opened for 
 him. I could not help being struck with the 
 difference of the probable fate of rich and poor in 
 old Park's hands, in his then mood and temper.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 CONCERNING- COLLEGE EXAMINATIONS AND CERTAIN 
 CANDIDATES KNOWN TO FAME. 
 
 ADVERTING to the case of noted men who were 
 plucked from carelessness and taking things too 
 easily, two cases occur to me. 
 
 Once the Dons at Wadham had a candidate 
 supposed to be going so straight to a first class, and 
 to be likely to do his college such honour, that 
 the tutors waived their lectures, and quite a large 
 company were on the way to the schools, when 
 they met their champion coming back. He had 
 been stopped in limine ; plucked for his divinity, 
 the subject with which the viva voce examinations 
 always began. 
 
 My friend Dickenson, Scholar of Trinity, had 
 put down his name for his " Great Go," when 
 Short tried him with a few questions in divinity 
 and soon exclaimed, " Why, Dickenson, you can't 
 pass you must read your Bible thoroughly, and 
 go up after the long vacation." 
 
 About the same time a little book made its 
 appearance, called " The Art of Pluck," being a 
 parody on our Aristotelian studies, giving also
 
 TAKING THINGS TOO EASY. 87 
 
 instances of pluck answers. One very good one I 
 remember was " The herald of Darius came to ask 
 for not earth and water (a token of submission, 
 earth being geen in Greek) but gin and water." 
 To describe this essay were to copy it ; suffice it 
 to say, it spread about the country as widely as 
 Lowe's verses, and added much to the fame of its 
 author, Caswall of Brasenose. This author was 
 reading, as I was, with Jackson, who fully 
 expected him to obtain the object of his ambition, 
 a first class. But Caswall had made a too common 
 mistake ; he thought men could be indoctrinated 
 with divinity by the mere atmosphere of chapel, 
 and as if the general knowledge attained without 
 special study was sufficient. With some examina- 
 tions this might be true, but when question after 
 question, technical and scholastic, comes, a man 
 feels wholly at a loss. 
 
 Hayward Cox, then examiner, told me he never 
 felt more pained for any man ; and at the end of 
 his examination one answer, giving a Hebrew 
 name as a guess for Eoman officer, appeared 
 incredible for a man of Cas wall's attainments. 
 With much compunction they allowed him to pass, 
 but never before had they stretched a point so far. 
 The question seriously arose Did not Caswall, 
 finding he was doing too badly for a first class,
 
 88 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 try to put his own art in requisition and to pluck 
 himself, that he might have another trial for his 
 first ? One thing I know ; he said to my friend 
 French " They ought not to have passed me, I 
 am very sorry that they did." 
 
 Hay ward Cox was an experienced examiner, 
 and a standing Coach for classmen, and was more 
 communicative as to the examinations than most 
 of his colleagues in the school. So I asked him 
 what it was which seemed to cause a little excite- 
 ment among, the examiners when I was in the 
 schools. A man had given up his logic paper in 
 a hurried and determined manner almost as soon 
 as looked at. Something was written on it which 
 seemed to make an impression on the examiners. 
 
 "You mean the case of Jones of Jesus an 
 impudent fellow ; we ought to have complained 
 of him to his Principal. Jones was seen to look 
 unutterable things at his set of logic questions, 
 and at last he doubled up and emphatically 
 creased the paper walked up with a very 
 determined step, and in a very depreciatory 
 manner gave in the paper to us, and left the 
 schools. When we looked at it we found it 
 endorsed as follows : 
 
 " * Mr. Jones presents his compliments to the 
 examiners and declines to trouble them any
 
 CHARLIE IN HIS ELEMENT. 89 
 
 further on this occasion. Mr. Jones would ex- 
 press due deference to the examiners as deeply 
 thinking men, but he cannot conceal- his unalter- 
 able conviction that logic is all a pack of stuff.' " 
 
 What made this still harder on Cox was that it 
 was he who had set the paper, and it was a paper 
 like logic run mad. So ill did it answer its 
 purpose that two good men had to be examined 
 with a more reasonable set of questions over 
 again. 
 
 During the paper work of this examination, in 
 June 1836, our old friend Charlie was among our 
 number. When he came out the first morning, 
 he said to me, in his usual very reckless 
 humour : 
 
 " Do you think you have given up satisfactory 
 answers? I don't know if I have, and what is 
 more, I don't care a blast if I haven't. But there, 
 is to be a meeting in the theatre this afternoon on 
 the great question of the day, and they say no 
 undergraduates are to be admitted. We'll try, 
 though. Won't there be a shindy ! " 
 
 " But," I said, " you'll be in the schools from 
 two to five." 
 
 " Never mind, I'll find time, all the same." 
 
 That afternoon there was a shindy indeed. 
 The doors were closed against not only the
 
 90 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 undergraduates, but against the reporters for the 
 press too, which these gentlemen did not like, so 
 they set to work to excite the undergraduates, 
 saying : 
 
 " Gentlemen, you have a right to go in. Surely 
 you have too much pluck to submit to this. We 
 would force the door if we were in your place." 
 This was soon done. Charlie led the way. The men 
 filled the gallery, and about four o'clock Charlie 
 came into the schools with a dilapidated gown, a 
 very flushed face, and a short poker hidden under 
 his coat, and made the best of the time that 
 remained for his examination papers. 
 
 There was one examiner in my recollection 
 very greedy of pupils, rather a silly and a leaky 
 vessel. No one accused him of intentional un- 
 fairness, but his pupils, when sharp fellows, could 
 guess about the line the examinations would take. 
 There was G of Trinity, who came out nearer a 
 first class than any of his friends ever dreamed of. 
 There was C D , a very sharp practitioner, 
 and, though a very clever fellow, also un- 
 expectedly in the First, and another, P C , 
 whose essay was said to have been one of the 
 best ever seen in the schools. No wonder, the 
 subject had been guessed and predicted from 
 being too frequently dwelt on by the lecturer.
 
 OXFORD EXAMINATIONS. 91 
 
 This my friend C L told me, as also of a likely 
 part of logic, and also of a part of Tacitus worth 
 especial attention all which surmises proved to 
 be true ! But this examiner was the exception. 
 There must be one weak character out of so 
 many. Still, in spite of this instance of mere 
 weakness, as to the fairness of the schools 
 generally no one in my time ever breathed the 
 least doubt of it. 
 
 As to the wisdom of the examination, I could 
 not always say the same. The style of examina- 
 tion was not twice the same. At one time it was 
 in favour of men of hard verbal memory, who at 
 another would have failed before a more 
 discursive system, requiring a wider course of 
 reading. Again, the questions were too few. No 
 man could know his sixteen books (required for 
 a First), in every part ; but if he had many 
 questions from which to select, he could not 
 fail to show knowledge, whereas bad luck alone 
 might ruin his chance, with, say only three 
 questions in such a book as Herodotus. 
 
 At the present time a man takes up his Poets 
 and Histories for " Mods," and can attend exclu- 
 sively to his sciences afterwards, "for Greats," 
 while we used to venture on sixteen books all at 
 once ; but as to Honours, there was a simplicity
 
 92 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 about the class list which exists not now. Soon 
 after the alteration in the schools for Honours, an 
 old college tutor said, " I hardly understand now 
 what a man's class is worth : when you tell me 
 such a man has taken a first in Mods and a 
 second in Greats, I cannot sum him up as I used 
 to do as a First Class man or a Second." 
 
 The expectations formed of promising men used 
 to be very frequently disappointed. The man of 
 sound reading and reflecting mind is not always 
 the man to make the best show with a number of 
 written questions. Quick and superficial men with 
 good memory here will often appear to more 
 advantage. 
 
 Cardinal Newman, was pronounced when an 
 undergraduate at Trinity College, by Mitchell, an 
 unquestioned judge and his tutor, to be sure of his 
 first class he came out only in the third ! Shortly 
 after he stood for his Oriel fellowship ; after the 
 first day's examination, as Isaac Williams, his great 
 friend, told me, Newman met Mr. Short and said 
 he should retire ; he had set down a few stray ideas 
 for the essay and could do no more. Short per- 
 suaded him to continue, if only for practice ; the 
 result proved that these stray ideas showed the 
 man at once. Dr. Whateley, at that time writing 
 his book on Logic at Oriel, used to say, " I look to
 
 LORD SHERBROOKE. 93 
 
 the promise to what is in a man, and what he will 
 grow to ; just as I choose for my kennel a good, 
 loose-jointed puppy." The third-class men often 
 beat the first for the Oriel fellowship, just as, at 
 Cambridge, the second or third wrangler beats the 
 senior for the Smiths' prize. A fellow of Oriel said, 
 they took rather a pride in not only disregarding 
 but in reversing the verdict of the schools. In the 
 schools I have known the second-class men in 
 science superior to the first at some examinations, 
 and fail because the minute detail of Thucydides 
 or of a decade of Livy was not to their taste. These 
 men would take precedence in a fellowship ex- 
 amination. Lord Sherbrooke was pronounced by 
 his tutors certain of a first in mathematics and not 
 certain in classics ; he came out first in the latter, 
 and second in the former. What was said of him 
 at first of course as a joke, has been repeated since 
 as a fact that being so near-sighted he rubbed 
 out with his nose the figures made by his pen, and 
 thereby lost his chance in mathematics. 
 
 I am afraid the fellowships are worth much 
 less than they used to be, from 200 to 300 a 
 year. Some little conversation with an ex-bursar 
 showed me how, even before these days of great 
 depreciation of land, a fellowship might, from 
 obvious causes, be worth much less at one time
 
 94 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 than another. The college estates, like others, 
 imply farm buildings and other subjects of annual 
 expense. Some bursars would put off the evil day 
 for such deductions, and leave an accumulation of 
 necessary work to be paid for from the revenue 
 of their successors. 
 
 Magdalen College has City property. Dr. Eouth 
 was told that this was much under-let, and more 
 could be made of it. His advice was worthy of 
 his years and experience. " Our fellowships are 
 good enough already, let some one else have the 
 benefit. With rack rents our profits will seem to 
 be so large that our college will excite unpleasant 
 notice ; there may be a commission, and we shall 
 lose some of what we have." I remember, at 
 Trinity College, a rare instance of liberality. My 
 friend Burningham, with Legh Claughton, the pre- 
 sent Bishop of St. Albans, were invited one morn- 
 ing by the bursar to breakfast. On such occasions 
 you always sent your own commons of bread and 
 butter and the hospitable don supplied the tea-pot 
 and an egg a-piece. Great was their surprise to 
 have a cheque for thirty-five pounds each, as an 
 exhibition, I suppose from the superabundance of 
 the college funds. 
 
 Scholarships and fellowships were founded for 
 the promotion of learning and the education of
 
 FELLOWSHIPS, WHEN BENEFICIAL. 95 
 
 poor scholars. Even a nobleman at Christ Church 
 benefits by the charity and endowments of former 
 days ; he pays less for a suite of rooms than he 
 would pay for the humblest lodging. Scholarships 
 act as an incentive to schoolmasters. At Shrews- 
 bury school the names of the Kennedys and others, 
 with their respective college honours, may be seen 
 on tablets on the walls. College honours are the 
 best stimulus and the best school advertisement. 
 So far they are beneficial ; otherwise, as " the 
 whole need not the physician," so, as we before 
 observed, those youths who can afford instruction 
 good enough to win a scholarship might do with- 
 out one. In " teaching the young idea how to 
 shoot," there is too much " shooting for the pot," 
 especially at Cambridge. As to fellowships, I 
 question whether they do not as much harm as 
 good. If they tide some industrious men over 
 early difficulties till they are fairly launched 
 and better able to stand the buffets of life, with 
 others they act as an insidious temptation to rest 
 on their oars at the very time they should put 
 forth all their powers. Lord Eldon, who had risen 
 from the home of a coal-fitter to be Lord Chancellor 
 of England, having once an application, pending 
 the decision of a suit in Chancery, to make an 
 order for an allowance of two hundred a year to a
 
 96 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 young man, asked if the petitioner were in court, 
 and if so, to stand forward. " Young man," said 
 he, " I am asked to do a very serious thing for you. 
 If I had had two hundred a year granted me at 
 your age I should not be where I am now." 
 
 Such prizes as fellowships fall in just at that 
 critical time of life when the zest for pleasure is 
 greatest and the habits of self-denial least. How 
 often have I seen men grown grey in idling about 
 Common rooms and College gardens a life which 
 is only not a life of luxury because it is a law of 
 nature that there shall be no healthy appetite un- 
 less you work for it, and that a Castle of Indolence 
 shall be the worst quarters you can have. " Life," 
 said Lord Beaconsfield, " is either anxiety or 
 ennui anxiety, if you do take an interest in 
 affairs, and ennui if you feel none." As I walk 
 round New College Gardens, I cannot but reflect 
 on old Dash, one of the senior fellows. His life was a 
 caution to a man. He lived a kind of smoking and 
 deshabille existence and always seemed bored and 
 miserable, most vividly exemplifying the truth that 
 " Man doth not live by bread alone," or, as this 
 was expressed to me in homely words by a pauper 
 in a workhouse, " If you were here, sir, with 
 nothing to do, you would find that a man may feel 
 about ready to hang himself all the same that he
 
 QUEER CHARACTERS. 97 
 
 has, as you say, a bed to lie on and three meals a 
 day." Yes, the old college fellow, high and dry 
 and stranded, as it were, while some ten youthful 
 generations have successively passed by him, has 
 felt the truth of what Bishop Butler, the author of 
 the Analogy, said when he divided life into " activi- 
 ties and passivities " We are capable of the plea- 
 sures and satisfactions of active duties ten hours in 
 the day for one hour in which we can enjoy mere 
 excitement, and being acted on. Idle men try 
 their passivities too hard ; the human lyre is out of 
 tune and the blase existence of that senior fellow 
 exemplifies the result. 
 
 Old Dash, in and about New College, had two 
 rather notable contemporaries. This was at a 
 time when no New College man was publicly 
 examined for his degree, and when a small 
 number of Wykehamists had the garden for 
 archery to themselves. One was John Green, 
 who took care of the New College horses and 
 let out tandems a very handy man for the 
 wilder class of gownsmen. One day Billy Mills 
 had arranged an elopement with the pretty 
 daughter of an organist in Holywell, but was 
 checkmated in the very first move, the lady's 
 trousseau, done up in a towel, having been 
 thrown out of her window, and caught by her 
 VOL. i. 7
 
 98 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 offended papa's hands as he was standing on the 
 watch instead of by those of some traitorous maid- 
 of-all-work. " That's all because Mr. Mills didn't 
 come to me," said John Green. " If gentlemen 
 will do those silly things it isn't my particular line 
 of business to edicate them better. All I say is 
 ' First of all keep straight, but if you must go 
 crooked don't get found out.' That 'ere servant 
 girl, with only ten pounds a year wages and use 
 of the parlour teapot, was to be paid only two 
 bob for her trouble ! 'Twasn't likely, when she 
 could get five bob and more for telling. In them 
 sort of jobs you must always bid higher than any 
 one else is likely to." 
 
 The other notable New College character was 
 
 O 
 
 Tom Winch, who came up to Oxford with a 
 reputation for making Latin verses, and catching 
 rats faster than any other boy at Winchester. He 
 was a very quaint character. His green coat and 
 brass buttons contrasted marvellously with his 
 black or rather rusty gown he was always to 
 be found about John Green's stable, and like 
 Hudibras, "wore but one spur." In those days 
 all men dressed, in the afternoon at least, as 
 gentlemen turn out in Hyde Park in the London 
 season. As to the flannels and loose deshabille 
 we see now in the High Street, even though there
 
 QUEER CHARACTERS OF NEW COLLEGE. 99 
 
 are ladies to meet there now, you would as soon 
 have expected to see it in Bond Street. Dogs 
 and horses formed the very furniture of Tom's 
 mind ; there seemed hardly room for anything 
 else save slang, ad libitum. One day he was 
 showing the pictures in his college hall to a party 
 of visitors, and pointed out the figures in the 
 grand picture of the Nativity as follows : " This 
 is reckoned one of the finest pictures in Oxford. 
 There, you see, are the Magi, there Mary and 
 Joseph, there in the manger is the little Jesus, 
 and there's the bull terrier." On another occa- 
 sion, when returning with a friend rather late, 
 and rather the worse, from a wine party, a proctor 
 stopped him and said, " This is highly improper ; 
 I must take cognisance of this, gentlemen." Tom, 
 fixing a pair of glaring eyes upon him, replied, 
 " What would you take for your cognisance with- 
 out the ' g,' old boy ? " The proctor passed on, 
 and, perhaps from the absurdity of the scene, 
 decided to take no more notice of the strange 
 interview. 
 
 Such a man as old Dash in my days must nearly 
 have led a monkish existence ; of female society 
 there then was none. The sight of a petticoat 
 in the High Street was rare. It seemed quite con- 
 traband. Even a Mrs. President took her exercise 
 
 7*
 
 100 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 in some private garden ; and when any under- 
 graduate had sisters or lady-friends on a visit to 
 see Oxford, a breakfast in College rooms with 
 ladies was something to boast of, and at the 
 time of the Commemoration, Oxford seemed 
 newly populated altogether. The many villas 
 about Oxford now represent quite another state 
 of society, and since ladies seem a providential 
 invention to humanize gentlemen, you would 
 hardly find, now-a-days, so dry a fossil as old 
 Dash. 
 
 Most of the fellows of New College eventually 
 succeeded to livings, though sometimes so late 
 that their college habits proved too stiff and 
 rigid for parish work ! Oxford is a sphere of its 
 own, and the worst place for studying rustic 
 nature. When some young man spoke of study- 
 ing " the Fathers," an old-fashioned rector said 
 rather bluntly, " You had much better study ' the 
 mothers,' or how to take care of the old women 
 and children in a 'parish." One of my friends 
 waited for a living and a lady, and realized his 
 vision of rural and domestic happiness only after 
 sixteen years ! 
 
 Old Mr. Beresford of Kibworth, the author of a 
 strange book, once with a large circulation, but 
 now rarely seen, the " Miseries of Human Life,"
 
 WAITING FOR DEAD MEN'S SHOES. 101 
 
 held that living of Merton College till nearly 
 eighty years of age. Once he saw some of the 
 junior fellows prospecting, and said : " Walk in, 
 gentlemen, walk in and take stock, not only of 
 the parsonage, but of the present incumbent. 
 Most happy at all times to do anything to oblige 
 you except die." It is a sad life waiting for 
 dead men's shoes. My venerable old neighbour, 
 Mr. Wickens of Blank church, bought a next 
 presentation of a rector of eighty, who lived 
 till ninety-five. All his calculations of the pro- 
 babilities of human life proved delusive, and as to 
 the doctors, he said they knew no more of a 
 man's constitution than so many idiots ; and in 
 these fifteen years he became completely soured, 
 and talked like one of the many much injured 
 men. At last the old Eector died and was 
 buried, and almost the first week a couple, who 
 came to be married, complained to the new 
 rector that he had kept them ten minutes wait- 
 ing ! " Ten minutes, indeed," he replied, " why 
 look at that tomb ; there lies a man who kept me 
 waiting fifteen years." 
 
 But to revert to my own college. Not the least 
 notable of my contemporaries at Trinity College 
 was Charles Clarke, the " Gentleman in Black " of 
 Baily's Sporting Magazine, and author of the
 
 102 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 " Dunce of the Family," and other popular novels. 
 He was a very good and clever fellow at college, 
 which character he bore through life, together with 
 his college sobriquet as Monkey Clarke. He had 
 rather a simious form of countenance, and since we 
 had White Clarke and Black Clarke at the same time, 
 we were obliged to find a discriminating cognomen 
 for our friend. He lived and died at Esher, with 
 a large estate in beautiful daughters and a small 
 estate in pupils ; the pupils with the press constantly 
 behind him, I have no doubt killed him. Brain- 
 work kills, though the malady is felt in the body ; 
 but whatever the cause, I, when I come to speak 
 of old chums of fifty years since, find few who have 
 not passed away : for, as Sydney Smith said, 
 " After seventy I felt like a man in battle, quite 
 prepared to see my old comrades drop fast around 
 me." 
 
 Now the world would persist in giving Clarke a 
 noble, if not an ignoble, parentage. Only last 
 month I had to argue with two of his best friends 
 that the story was absurd and an anachronism. 
 It was believed that he was the son of the celebrated 
 Mrs. Clarke, whose connection with the Duke of 
 York caused an historical scandal in 1810 ; but 
 our friend was not the first of the name credited 
 to the duke, for there was a Cantab Clarke, whose
 
 AN OLD POLITICAL SCANDAL. 103 
 
 name caused to be set afloat the same story. Such 
 was Mrs. Clarke's influence with the duke, that she 
 established a regular agency for the sale of com- 
 missions, and other kinds of preferment too, at a 
 given tariff. I have read her examination before 
 a committee of the House of Lords ; she had 
 applications for her interest with the duke for 
 deaneries and even bishoprics, though probably 
 from dupes. As to church preferment, a letter 
 was read in which the Duke of York evidently had 
 procured for one of her clerical friends a pulpit to 
 preach before the king. Some doubted that the 
 duke had any guilty knowledge of the way his 
 appointments proved lucrative to his mistress, but 
 as there's nothing for nothing in this world, no one 
 could doubt that if he had no guilty knowledge, 
 he had at least a guilty ignorance. The Duke of 
 York resigned his position as Commander-in-Chief 
 during the Parliamentary inquiry, but was after- 
 wards reinstated by his brother, the Prince of 
 "Wales, during the first Eegency. 
 
 But how did the report of Charles Clarke's 
 parentage originate, when he was too young 
 for the story to be true not born till at least 
 five years after the separation which provoked 
 Mrs. Clarke to supply Col. Wardle with 
 information on which he based his charges
 
 104 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 against the duke ? CHarles Clarke had a painting 
 of the Duke of York in his room at College ; the 
 duke was also known to Clarke's family. My 
 friend Eobinson, reading the story of the duke's 
 examination, suggested the relationship, and this 
 thoughtless surmise has passed to this day as a 
 fact. Mr. and Mrs. Clarke, his father and mother, 
 were well known to my friend the Eev. M. Kinsey. 
 Mr. Clarke was a stockbroker. 
 
 I had been speaking of the uproarious set in. 
 college ; but with Charles Clarke I must enter on 
 a more rational class. Such were the late Sir 
 Crawley Boevey, Hunt, Pulteney, and others, whose 
 fathers could afford to let them keep horses and 
 hunt men who did not pretend to be studious or 
 hard-reading men ; but who went quietly through 
 the academical course and had little difficulty with 
 their degrees. Sir Crawley was a good hand at 
 the thimble rig. I heard that he once played it 
 successfully with the end of a roll for the pea, and 
 three breakfast cups for the thimble. Being always 
 fond of knowing whatever was circulating, I pressed 
 him to teach me the trick ; but for a time in vain. 
 He said he could not tell what trade he might sink 
 to, and I should be a likely man to spoil it ; but at 
 last, being in a hurry to Latinize his weekly piece 
 of Addison's " Spectator," he made a bargain with
 
 / LEARN THE THIMBLE-RIG. 105 
 
 me to teach me thimble-rigging in exchange for 
 Latin-writing for the rest of the term. 
 
 Not long after, in London, at a party in Gray's 
 Inn, I was asked to manipulate ; and crossed 
 Holborn to a large draper's shop and asked for 
 three thimbles. The venerable grey-haired master 
 replied by saying, "Sir, I wish you would show 
 me the trick." I replied, " I have said nothing of 
 any trick," but he said : " No, no, but you do not 
 look like an ordinary customer for three copper 
 thimbles." I soon began with the thimbles, and 
 I bet him the value of the thimbles and 
 won them ! which I told him was the best moral 
 lesson I could give him. But afterwards I gave 
 him a little information in return. He said, " This 
 would have been worth more than the threepence 
 when I was young ; but I am too old now to 
 believe money is made as easily as it looked at this 
 game at Epsom." When I returned to my legal 
 friends they were delighted, but assured me I was 
 in the old shopkeeper's power, and he could send 
 me to the treadmill. 
 
 But Boevey reminds me of the ups and downs 
 of life. He had a friend who seemed to me, and 
 perhaps at that time really was, in circumstances 
 as flourishing as Boevey himself, and with as bright 
 a future, named Bout ell of Oriel.
 
 106 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Twenty years after Sir Crawley found his old 
 college chum in Gloucester workhouse and did no 
 little to alleviate his misery! How could this 
 happen ? With family and friends who once could 
 afford a man a University education, how could any 
 man sink so low ? In my experience, which is quite 
 long enough to have seen wild oats sown, and even 
 a second crop spring up, such cases have been few 
 and far between, and generally with men who 
 drank their senses away, or with some men, more 
 to be pitied, who were born with little senses at all. 
 
 Canon EL, who was tutor at Cambridge and pro- 
 fessor at Haileybury, told me that notwithstanding 
 the difficulties of life, in all his experience with 
 young men, he had never known any man so utterly 
 degraded, unless he had exhausted the patience of 
 his friends by most reckless conduct. I can say 
 the same. But as to those born without sense, 
 too little allowance is commonly made for them. 
 " Have you thanked God for the use of your 
 reason to-day ? " said a lunatic in a lucid interval ; 
 it is not every man out of an asylum who has the 
 full use of it. 
 
 The Micawber temperament is a very common 
 one. Such men are always hoping that " something 
 may turn up," instead of working for it the men 
 of whom Adam Smith remarked " that the world
 
 WILD BOYS. 107 
 
 is not in favour of men with a sanguine dis- 
 position." Our spirits and hopeful views of 
 things rise and fall with the barometer, at the 
 mercy even of atmospheric influences. We have 
 all observed the Irish as compared with the 
 Scotch character ; the Irishman will be happy 
 on what he calls a hundred a year " Though, 
 faith, it's only for one year." Paddy seems as if 
 born with half a bottle of champagne in him, 
 and living always in a state of effervescence and 
 hallucination to the day of his death. How, to 
 such a man, can you apply the usual standard of 
 prudence ; how can you wonder if a certain 
 per centage goes to the dogs, especially when the 
 said effervescence becomes yet more sparkling 
 from a friendly glass, for it wants but a drop to 
 scatter the little wit which is fully at command ? 
 
 Boutell was the victim of both shortcomings. 
 A youth with whom I was reasoning one day 
 said, "You say, sir, 'All would be well, if I 
 would only think.' Why, that is all the difficulty, 
 for in jolly company I can't think." The same 
 was the case with Wing called Jobber Wing 
 at Eton. The fellows heard his father was a 
 cattle agent, and as the boys are not complimen- 
 tary, they said he was a pig-jobber and called 
 him Jobber Wing ever after. Jobber sank rapidly
 
 108 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 from bad to worse and before lie was twenty-five 
 years of age, Lord Eobert B , crossing over by 
 Oxford Circus, heard " Broom, your honour," 
 and, in a familiar tone, " Surely Bob will give me 
 something, for old acquaintance sake." "Why, 
 who the deuce are you ? " " Jobber Wing, Lux- 
 more's House, in the fifth form with you at Eton." 
 Some words passed Jobber said nothing was to 
 be done. He had made his bed and must lie on 
 it. Lord B dropped a sovereign and went his 
 way. Nothing can indeed be done in such cases, 
 for even if not " tied and bound by the chains " 
 of bad habits, a poor gentleman is indeed a puzzle 
 to the charitable. 
 
 In business, a gentleman not qualified to be the 
 master is too great a trial to one's feelings to 
 treat with as the man. He looks starving and 
 wretched where a tradesman's son is cheerful and 
 contented, and no one can endure to deal with 
 him. 
 
 At the time of which I am speaking honours 
 could be taken only in classics and mathe- 
 matics. Dr. Gaisford, of Christ Church, was 
 not very encouraging as to mathematical 
 studies. He once said to a friend of mine, 
 " Oh, mathematics well, they will do to keep 
 vou out of mischief." Save with a view to
 
 MEN OF A BETTER SORT. 109 
 
 honours, very few men were likely to go far in 
 mathematics. However valuable for the formation 
 of mind, for the information not one man in 
 twenty thousand ever lives to want more than an 
 Equation, if as much. Strange to say, in point 
 of utility, classics are commonly depreciated, 
 mathematics never. Men of other tastes com- 
 monly took refuge in politics, attended the Union, 
 and read little but the newspapers. We were 
 much at a loss for the publications of the da}^ 
 Whitter, opposite Trinity, had a little shop with 
 a few novels to lend, a poor collection. There 
 was then no Mudie to help librarians with small 
 capital, and a bookseller assured me that, however 
 strange, a good circulating library could not be 
 made to pay in Oxford. 
 
 I have sincere pleasure in dwelling on the 
 histories of the wiser class of men, because there 
 are certain publications which do a positive injury 
 to society, showing but the worst part of college 
 life, and that part shamefully exaggerated. They 
 fill the minds of schoolboys with examples of 
 profligacy and give a taste for dissipation ; and 
 instead of things honourable and of good report, 
 in which neither Oxford nor Cambridge would be 
 found wanting on a fair comparison of good and 
 bad together, scenes of folly and of vice are
 
 110 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 crowded together and set forth in flaming colours, 
 as an average sample of the whole. And why ? 
 Because forsooth the minds of those writers who 
 condescend, or are fit to minister to the vulgar 
 palate, have an affinity to vice, but not to virtue, 
 and because there are fifty readers of the lives of 
 profligates to one admirer of such worthies as 
 those enshrined in the pages of good old Isaac 
 Walton. Let us forget such scenes ; they have as 
 little claim to the title of Life in Oxford as a 
 certain Tom and Jerry history of cockfights, the 
 prize-ring, sporting taverns, and the lowest dens 
 of thieves and drunkards, deserved to be called 
 Life in London. 
 
 Stand for a moment in Cheapside ; see the 
 unwearied stream of cabs, omnibuses, merchants' 
 waggons, and vehicles of all kinds ; picture to 
 yourself the establishment, the business, and the 
 commerce of which each must be the representa- 
 tive and the product. Look at the double stream 
 on each side of the way of busy passers to and 
 fro, with quick step and contracted brow, each 
 absorbed in his own enterprises ; and when you 
 have formed some kind of estimate of the count- 
 less thousands engaged in the honourable duties 
 of commercial life, then ask yourself, Where are 
 the brutes and bullies, the madmen and the
 
 GOOD SETS AS WELL AS BAD. Ill 
 
 profligates, whom many are so far imposed on 
 as to believe the chief actors on the vast stage 
 of London Life ? No less erroneous are the im- 
 pressions commonly received of our Universities. 
 It is not to be denied that London has its thieves, 
 its rakes, and roues of every grade, from the titled 
 swindler and adulteress to the lowest pilferer and 
 prostitute of St. Giles's. It is not to be denied 
 that in Oxford there are those who glory in their 
 shame, buy that for which they cannot pay, keep 
 company with stage-coachmen, and seem to think 
 it the height of gentility and manliness to affect 
 the language of the boor and the appetites of the 
 brute. But look about you as you pass through 
 that City of Colleges, and ask, Where are they, 
 and what is the proportion they bear to the many 
 by whom the very mention of such practices are 
 frowned away in disgust? Compare those of 
 academical education with the other members of 
 society, and then say whether their manners and 
 taste are such as to argue that the exaggerated 
 excesses of the Universities are the exception or 
 the rule. Doubtless, youth is the age of inex- 
 perience and folly, of strong temptations to 
 commit error, and utter carelessness to conceal 
 it. This is the case t all the world over, and not 
 in Oxford only. Temptations are not local.
 
 112 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 They are more from within than from without ; 
 and who will deny that the same number of 
 young men would give quite as much cause for 
 scandal if scattered about the country, as if 
 collected together in colleges. For, though large 
 societies of the young engender a spirit of excite- 
 ment which encourages slighter excesses, we must 
 not forget that they also originate a public opinion 
 and a sentiment by which the more serious 
 failings are kept in check. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, we hear of defying proc- 
 tors or tutors, being at the mercy of dunning 
 creditors, and using childish tricks to evade them, 
 climbing college walls, mixing with low company, 
 and being countenanced in intemperance of any 
 kind, we shall do well to consider that the persons 
 who amuse us with such stories have only picked 
 up a tale of the extravagances of some silly 
 fellow in an unguarded moment, and that such 
 practices are known to the majority only to be 
 laughed at and despised.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A COMMON CHAPTER OF COLLEGE LIFE, WITH BATHER 
 UNCOMMON INCIDENTS. 
 
 As to the Union, Gladstone and Sidney Herbert 
 had made their mark there, and done much to 
 give a character to that which was then a recent 
 establishment. Soon after, Eoundell Palmer, 
 Eickards, Cardwell, Lowe and also Ward who 
 afterwards seceded to Eome, were first and fore- 
 most. Lowe, I think, was the best speaker. But 
 there was soon a " Cave " party there. Lowe and 
 others, disagreeing with the ruling of the chair- 
 man, started, as before said, a lesser Union of 
 their own ; the right to belong to both at the 
 same time was questioned, but after a great 
 contest they prevailed. This contest it was which 
 was celebrated in the Uniomachia, to which I 
 have before alluded. Of course, it is amusing 
 to recall these days, and the diatribes so boldly 
 uttered against men and measures, which now 
 seem so ridiculous, reminding one too much of 
 what John Bunyan said of men, "Who having 
 got a notion by the end, were twice as positive 
 as nine men who could render a reason." 
 
 VOL. i. 8
 
 114 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 We had also smaller clubs in each college we 
 named them Decades of ten men each. The 
 plan was to meet and compare notes after reading 
 on some specified subject. This was very useful, 
 and I can confidently recommend this practice 
 to my young friends. At one time I was reading 
 Herodotus with three or four friends, and we 
 rarely met without trying to puzzle each other 
 with some ingenious question. I remember one 
 day meeting Le Breton. He was primed, as I 
 expected, with something Herodotean, and said, 
 " Why, what an indefatigable traveller Herodotus 
 must have been. He not only travelled about 
 fifteen hundred miles from north to south, and as 
 far from east to west, but once, in Egypt, he went 
 back some two hundred miles to ask one question 
 more from the priests ! Fancy a tourist now 
 retracing his steps over a pathless country, from 
 London to York, to ask one question more of the 
 Dean and Chapter." " Yes," said Prichard, " and 
 can you tell me how much you and I, even, are 
 interested in the defeat of Xerxes ? Had he con- 
 quered at Marathon the Persians would have 
 swept over, not only Greece, but Eome and all 
 Europe. We should have worn all the toggery 
 of Orientals, and worshipped the sun at the 
 present hour." " Yes," said Vowler, " to follow
 
 A SAD TAKE IN. 115 
 
 the i ifs ' of history would land us in hypothetical 
 positions queer indeed ; for Gibbon says, ' but for 
 the check of the Turks at the Battle of Chalons, 
 we might have had here at Oxford a Mahommedan 
 lecturer to a set of circumcised students.' " 
 
 Poor Vowler ! Had he read men, or rather 
 women, a little later in life, with as shrewd a 
 mind as he read books at Oxford, he would 
 have been saved from a very ridiculous and a 
 very critical position. 
 
 Vowler's story must be told. Vowler was one 
 morning walking near the Serpentine, when he 
 saw, simply and neatly dressed, a lady of an 
 interesting appearance, attended by her maid. 
 Some glances were exchanged, and the next 
 morning he met the same couple again, and 
 perceived a look of recognition from the maid, 
 The next morning he went again, and found 
 the maid alone, and had a little talk with her 
 about her interesting mistress. He was told 
 she was a lady of very large property, at that 
 time in a state of melancholy, because an 
 imperious father was bent on controlling her 
 affections in favour of some fashionable roue of 
 his acquaintance. Still further, Vowler was no 
 little flattered to hear that the mistress was 
 very much interested in him. On this hint, 
 
 8*
 
 116 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 he found some pretence for speaking, and 
 eventually of having morning after morning an 
 agreeable walk with the lady, until love and 
 affection were the topic. No sooner was this 
 corner turned, than Vowler happened to meet 
 her apparently in deep distress. She said, with 
 many tears, that she had come to an open 
 rupture with her father, and was afraid to 
 return to her home. Pity is allied to love. 
 Vowler became at once her champion and her 
 friend, and proposed to improve the occasion, 
 and to start for Gretna Green that very day. 
 
 When once started on the London and North- 
 Western Bailwajr, Vowler began to feel that little 
 disenchantment which want of money is the most 
 likely of all things to produce. How could he 
 contrive to cash a cheque ? But, meanwhile, he 
 had entered into jovial conversation with an open- 
 hearted Irish M.P., Mr. O'B , one of O'Connell's 
 tail, and was after a time encouraged by the 
 genial character of this fellow-traveller to tell his 
 story and his difficulty. Mr. O'B , replied that 
 he was at all times most happy to help his neigh- 
 bour at a push, especially on so interesting an 
 occasion ; but, as a man of the world, Mr. Vowler 
 would not be offended at his asking first to have 
 a little talk with the lady at the Wolverhampton
 
 FOUND OUT! "117 
 
 station. All proving satisfactory, Mr. O'B said 
 they must consent to stop, and come with him to 
 his house near Crewe, to get the cash required. 
 Arrived there, Mrs. O'B also was fired with a 
 touch of the romantic, and kindly added to the 
 lady's trousseau, which at that time consisted only 
 of one pocket handkerchief in a reticule. From 
 Gretna Green, imagine the fond couple at the 
 father's house, old General V., in Oxfordshire. 
 Homer represents Bellerophon as entertained three 
 whole days by Proetus, before his ideas of hospi- 
 tality allowed him to talk of business ; so some 
 little time passed away before the General spoke 
 of mediating between the lady and her offended 
 father, or of conferring with her solicitor, or of 
 other matters naturally suggested by the occasion. 
 Time after time, these suggestions were waived, 
 or met with some lame excuse, till what at first 
 seemed strange, now seemed suspicious. At 
 last as the letter-bag one morning was emptied 
 on the breakfast-room table, one young lady ex- 
 claimed, " How remarkable ! She has never 
 had one letter yet ! " The game was now up. 
 Inquiry and at last a confession proved that she 
 had no father, cruel or riot cruel, and no character ; 
 and the supposed servant was the same class as 
 herself !
 
 118 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Alas ! poor Yowler ; and was he linked indis- 
 solubly to this artful creature for life ? 
 
 The lawyers gave little encouragement. The 
 case was not new in law. Having sworn at the 
 altar to " take her for better for worse " this 
 disposed of the moral objection ; while the 
 words " for richer for poorer " disposed of all 
 pleas as to the money she pretended to possess. 
 Some one suggested that the plea, " for better for 
 worse " was all fair, but here was a case of all 
 worse and no better ; but my poor friend's case 
 was desperate, till some one said, " Set a detective 
 at work, perhaps it is not the first time she has 
 played this trick." This proved to be true ; and 
 Yowler though the laugh was so loud for some 
 time that he left his regiment and shunned the 
 paths of men was able to get rid of the bad 
 bargain, at once a happier and a wiser man. 
 
 Let me describe my first entrance on college 
 life. Parents may be as ignorant now of the steps 
 to be taken in putting a name down as was my 
 father. We walked about from college to college, 
 receiving everywhere the same reply, " Full for 
 two or three years." "My son is very steady," 
 said my father. " They are all steady till they 
 come here," replied the Dean of Exeter. At 
 length, some tutor went so far out of his way as
 
 COLLEGES, BETTER AND WORSE. 119 
 
 to say that in any desirable college introductions 
 were essential. On this hint, I remembered Dr. 
 Parsons was father of a schoolfellow, and with his 
 assistance I was soon entered at Trinity, as one 
 of the desirable colleges. 
 
 As I am speaking of fifty years since, and not of 
 colleges as they now are, I may record that 
 Queen's stood very low, so low that many would 
 not visit a Queen's man. The reason was, that 
 there were many north countrymen there at that 
 time, a race far inferior to the civilisation of the 
 south. To Wadham, a prejudice, slowly wearing 
 out, still attached still the connection was not 
 good, and the style of men was inferior. Pem- 
 broke, and yet more exclusively, Jesus, had 
 Welshmen, also to our ideas but semi-civilised. 
 
 I can confidently say, the tone and style, to 
 last for a life, which marked the men of these 
 less desirable colleges was well worth considering 
 when compared with that which characterized 
 other colleges. Christchurch, University and 
 Brasenose stood highest, though the latter had a 
 gambling set ; and, even now, there is a tradition 
 of a certain club, too nearly synonymous with the 
 queer title of a recent German work, " Letters from 
 Hell." There was a son of the celebrated Crock- 
 ford, a rich sporting man, and the son of Nugee, as
 
 120 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 celebrated as the late Mr. Poole the tailor, and, 
 ludicrously enough, I remember a friend who 
 after using the common expression, " sitting upon 
 needles," was much afraid he should be supposed 
 to have made a personal allusion to Nugee. 
 
 New College, Magdalen, and All Souls were all 
 close boroughs. All Souls had only fellows and 
 four bible clerks as undergraduates. A fellow of 
 Trinity was paid for lecturing them. No one in 
 All Souls would condescend to be tutor. How 
 Mr. Hughes, in his " Tom Brown at Oxford," 
 could make a point of the cruelty of snubbing a 
 poor bible clerk I cannot imagine. For besides 
 these four, and one or two others, bible clerks did 
 not exist. New College had only Wykehamists, 
 and at Magdalen there were only a dozen Demies. 
 All the other colleges were in good repute. Oriel 
 and Balliol were colleges distinguished for reading- 
 men, though, from a good selection of scholars, 
 Trinity bore away more prizes than any college, 
 in proportion to its numbers. It also turned out 
 most red coats, in which they fraternised with 
 Merton, where my friend Hogg and a few. others 
 were known as " the swell mob of Merton," a 
 name which may give an idea of rather a fast, 
 though a small college. 
 
 Society now has become so little exclusive
 
 HOW I ENTER TRINITY. 121 
 
 in Oxford as well as elsewhere, that these 
 characteristics of the several colleges may no 
 longer prevail. As to exclusiveness, honour and 
 solvency, the mere name of a gownsman com- 
 manded credit at every shop, " but," said an old 
 bookseller, " we are obliged to be more cautious 
 now, and to ask for references or make inquiries, 
 much the same as in other towns." 
 
 Eventually my name was down at Trinity. 
 " Are you prepared," said Mr. Short, " for some 
 expense for your son ? " " For any reasonable 
 expense." " Then you must not calculate on less 
 than 200 a year." He afterwards in conversa- 
 tion remarked, " I prefer to be explicit ; but I do 
 meet with some great fools. One father replied 
 he wished his son to keep high society ; and in 
 his first term I found a regiment of champagne 
 bottles outside that son's door." Champagne was 
 rarely seen in those days, so of course 200 a 
 year did not go far with the hopeful youth. 
 
 After a year I had notice to come up for 
 matriculation, that is, to be taken under the wing 
 of Alma mater after a preliminary examination. 
 This examination in those days was at Trinity 
 much lighter than at present. How my friend 
 Wratislaw passed I cannot tell. He had tried at 
 Exeter College, and, after confessing he could not
 
 122 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 write Latin, unless lie were allowed a dictionary, 
 the tutor soon arrived at an unfavourable con- 
 clusion ; still by some accident he passed at 
 Trinity. We had no divinity in this examination ; 
 more is the pity. Old Drinkard, as we commonly 
 called him, though from Eugby in Dr. Arnold's 
 day, did not know the old Testament from the 
 New. I remember Moore, also from Winchester, 
 equally at a loss, searching in vain for Isaiah " in 
 the wrong part," as he said, which wrong part 
 was the New Testament ! Boys at a public 
 school were supposed, it seemed, to know enough 
 scripture from their nursery lessons, and that 
 perhaps would account for my poor friend " the 
 Count," who never knew a mother's care, being 
 utterly ignorant. Still at matriculation we all 
 were required to sign the Articles, though never 
 lectured in them till two years after. Obviously 
 this early examination should be, though too often 
 it was not, strict enough to prevent any youth 
 from wasting time in hopes of a degree when he 
 was too ignorant to be likely ever to pass. 
 
 Eooms were now appointed me. For the first 
 time in my life to have an establishment of my 
 own was quite a delightful sensation. I had also 
 about an eighth part of the services of a bed- 
 maker, yclept a scout. Old Budd, who had seen
 
 THE COLLEGE " SCOUT." 123 
 
 many generations of freshmen pass off in 
 bachelors' gowns, a man with much useful in- 
 formation, was assigned to me. He said how he 
 remembered our then President as an under- 
 graduate, nor could he forget that he once had 
 a glass of gin for paying a biU for him, 
 " Because," said the tradesman, " it comes like a 
 windfall ; it is a six years' tic ! " Glasses, 
 crockery, cruets, &c., Budd was ready to sell 
 me a set that, more or less supplemented, had 
 been passed on from generation to generation. 
 
 Twenty years after I left college my name was 
 identified on my copper kettle, all such things 
 being a legacy to the scout. Having once bought 
 one set of crockery and glass, no one at all wide 
 awake ever bought any more. 
 
 Your scout never made any difficulty in finding 
 enough at what paid him so well, with perqui- 
 sites a breakfast or a wine party. He borrowed, 
 as he said, of your friends on the same staircase. 
 The truth was the scouts lent to each other and we 
 knew nothing of it. In many respects we lived 
 like brothers, very much with community of goods, 
 community, that is, where all were good fellows, 
 but there are men who sponge on their friends 
 everywhere. Alex, for instance, was noted for 
 taking all and returning nothing. He once sent to
 
 124 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 a freshman to lend him his- ham ; he would not 
 trouble him, only he had a breakfast party ! 
 
 Much as we at first enjoy the independence of 
 rooms to ourselves, we soon miss the family circle, 
 and yearn for society. To " send your commons 
 to my room," meant, to chum for breakfast, the 
 inviter finding little but the eggs and teapot ; and 
 very agreeable these homely hours used to be. 
 Sometimes you would afterwards construe the 
 lecture together. If you did not know where it 
 began, your scout would be sent to ask, and bring 
 back as pat as possible, perhaps, " Medea of Euri- 
 pides, sir, the chorus after the long speech of 
 Jason." From long practice the scouts were 
 quite familiar with classical names and terms. 
 
 This missing of your family circle, in the loneli- 
 ness of college rooms, led also to frequent wine 
 parties. For, after animated conversation in hall, 
 you did not like to separate from a merry set 
 scampering away to the rooms of the man who had 
 invited " to wine," and to mope away in your own 
 rooms alone, though this involved expense beyond 
 the 200 a year. Nor was this all ; you were soon 
 committed to a certain " set." Oxford and college 
 life is life in miniature ; for in the world at large 
 we are all committed to our " set," and find our- 
 selves not altogether free agents, but at the mercy
 
 TANDEMS NOT ALLOWED. 125 
 
 of our social circle and its public opinion to do as 
 others do or retire altogether. So an expensive 
 set involved expensive habits as to wine and enter- 
 tainments ; nor did your expense end there. You 
 felt very slow unless you joined, to some extent at 
 least, in their rides and tandems. Tandems were 
 forbidden, as also were gigs or " buggies " near the 
 end of my time, about 1836, and then they were 
 only allowed with the proctor's leave, but this leave 
 merely involved a note to the proctor, sent by the 
 hostler when you ordered the gig. 
 
 To be seen in a tandem was penal. Proctors 
 would lie in wait for you on your return, perhaps 
 by Magdalen Bridge, though some had a leader put 
 on and taken off clear of Oxford. Not so Maclane. 
 He heard that proctors were waiting, so he took off 
 and hid under the seat his hat and coat, and tucked 
 up his sleeves and drove right by the two proctors, 
 personating and being mistaken for the hostler. 
 
 As to hospitalities, I could hardly manage with- 
 out a breakfast party and wine party of some 
 numbers once a term, or perhaps a supper party. 
 As to our breakfast parties, our tables would have 
 astonished our families at home, beefsteaks, kidneys 
 and broiled fowls, were dishes quite customary. 
 But this was at an end after the President had, as 
 before said, shied Charlie Lane's expected breakfast
 
 126 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 into the shrubbery, and we were limited to the cold 
 meat from the buttery. Of this rule I was very 
 glad, as were men generally ; it reduced our ex- 
 penses ; we could not be deemed stingy, though the 
 breakfast was cheap. Wine and supper parties 
 were expensive ; there was no cheap wine in those 
 days, though the Oxford black-strap was an exe- 
 crable substitute for port. Alex used to say, " Now 
 you shall have a glass of the Old Admiral ;" he 
 would wish us to suppose that it was fifty years 
 in bottle, got up by the divers from the Eoyal 
 George, but we found him out, and abused his 
 economy loudly. At supper egg-flip, made of egg 
 and sherry hot, and bishop, of port mulled with 
 lemon and spice, were concocted for us by the 
 Common Eoom man. Supper parties led to much 
 excess, and were most uproarious. 
 
 A great part of Trinity lay remote from the 
 rooms of the tutors ; when near we were obliged 
 to be cautious as to the noise we made. I have 
 seen a party of a dozen men, some quite drunk and 
 the rest not quite sober. But at that time it was 
 not generally so discreditable to be drunk as it is 
 now ; some boasted of it as manly. After my first 
 term I drew off from this set, or I should have been 
 ruined, having become intimate with reading men, 
 with Prichard, Lee, and a few others of the best
 
 AMATEUR HIGHWAYMEN. 127 
 
 scholars of the day. Still, I found it necessary 
 to act with discretion, and to preserve an appear- 
 ance of good fellowship, and an accommodating 
 spirit. So my rooms were soon known as 
 a sure " find " for a cup of tea for any solitary 
 straggler at late hours, or for a quiet glass for one 
 or two, when there was no party in college. While 
 you continued in a regular set, men used to " chaff," 
 and resent your absence, as if you were bound to 
 be social, and to keep things going. Of this there 
 was an amusing instance at New College. 
 
 Some men, just returned from hunting, were 
 disappointed in finding two of their set bent on an 
 Abingdon ball instead of joining a jolly party. 
 They decided on acting highwaymen, as with 
 Falstaff. They first went to Sheard's stables, 
 where the chaise was ordered, and the post- 
 boy was instructed how to act. The chaise was 
 stopped at Bagley Woods a black candlestick, 
 presented, served in the dark as a pistol ; three of 
 the dancing pumps, out of four, secured in a 
 scuffle ; then a cry was raised of " Some one 
 coming," and the men decamped and rode back 
 with their booty, and placed the pumps in 
 the rooms of the robbed, to tell their own 
 story on their return. Whether as to the " lies 
 they told " " Therein lies the jest " were words
 
 128 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 applicable to them as to Falstaff, before they found 
 the shoes, I cannot tell. 
 
 " When the wine is in the wit is out." 
 Drunkenness is madness while it lasts, and absurd 
 jokes and frolics are the result. One day the 
 passage between the two quadrangles was found 
 blocked with snow at St. John's College. The 
 offenders were allowed time to compound, under a 
 threat of confining to gates the whole college till 
 they came forward. Worse still, the statue of 
 her Majesty at Queen's was crowned, as new boys 
 at school used to be crowned, in bed-room pottery 
 for the early coaches stopping then at the Angel 
 Inn, opposite, to talk of all down the road. The 
 offender was found out ; he did not consider that 
 with the deficiency in his crockery the inference 
 would be obvious. 
 
 I used to read till about eleven at night, so my 
 room was a common lounge for any friend who 
 had come in late from an after- dinner drive, or to 
 tell me of some theatricals in a barn, or other 
 attraction not allowed in Oxford, and which there- 
 fore tempted gownsmen to the neighbouring 
 towns. 
 
 Bethune came one night to say that his mare 
 had been kicking, and something had occurred 
 which had really been a trial to his conscience.
 
 A NARROW ESCAPE. 129 
 
 " My mare became savage and I heard her heels 
 again and again at the splash-board. Now a 
 difficulty with a horse in the dark is very nervous 
 work when you are all alone, and no one to help 
 you if you come to a crash and a spill, so I 
 thought I should like to take up a passenger. I 
 overtook two men and offered a ride to one of 
 them ; but they could not separate and wanted me 
 to take up both. This my conscience would not 
 allow ; with only two of us the mare's heels might 
 luckily go between, but the man in the middle 
 would be sure to catch it." Little did these simple 
 fellows know how far it was from any dis- 
 interested kindness that one of them had been 
 offered a lift. 
 
 This position of affairs I well could appreciate ; 
 only a week before a kicking horse had cleared 
 the splash-board and kicked my friend Wratislaw, 
 the driver, on the arm. We soon turned round, 
 the splash-board, by repeated kicks, bent quite 
 out of the perpendicular and drove back to 
 Sheard's, opposite the gate of Christchurch. 
 
 Old John Sheard was the noted horse-dealer and 
 stable-keeper of those days, and when we com- 
 plained of the dangerous brute, and asked for 
 another, he (John) said : 
 
 "Well, I never! Why, Bill (to the hostler), 
 VOL. i. 9
 
 130 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 would you believe it? the mare have been a 
 kicking ! " Of course Bill looked astonished. 
 " Why, do you know, sir, when my wife wants 
 to drive our four little ones over to see their 
 grandmother at Abingdon, she says to me, ' John, 
 let us have the mare. ' : 
 
 " That's all my grandmother," said Wratislaw, 
 " that brute would scatter their blessed little legs 
 and arms all about the road before you got past 
 Folly Bridge You know I did once hear you 
 say there was no harm to tell a lie about a 
 horse." 
 
 The occasion of such a piece of moral philo- 
 sophy was this : 
 
 John Sheard was found one day looking very 
 blue over his ledger, when he burst forth with a 
 strong monosyllable or two, asseverating that he 
 would never trust a gentleman's word again. " At 
 least not in money matters. Why, Muster Watson, 
 as was at Corpus, came to me in much of a fix one 
 morning and said, ' Sheard, the governor is a- 
 coming to see after my tics, and I'd as soon see the 
 devil just now.' 'Make a clean breast of it,' said 
 I, ' Out with it all at once and one row will do for 
 all.' ' But I've told him, Sheard, that your bill of 
 15 is paid. He's sure to come and ask, so you'll 
 oblige me say it's all right.' Well, as it was only
 
 FATHERS AND THEIR WAYS. 131 
 
 about a horse, when the old gentleman came I told 
 him that damnation lie. And now, would you 
 believe it, sir, the six years have passed and six 
 years' tic is bad in law and here's Muster 
 Watson's lawyer's letter to say I can't have a 
 penny of it, for he wasn't of age, and time is run 
 out." 
 
 As to the so-called Governors I am afraid they 
 have been sometimes called Relieving-Omcers 
 there always appeared to be very little confidence 
 or fair understanding between fathers and sons. 
 The fathers never seemed to come on the stage till 
 all the mischief was done. Instead of an ex*: 
 perienced friend and adviser, instead of the cha- 
 racter of a father-confessor, he was more like an 
 inquisitor. Frankenstein, after making a man and 
 galvanizing him into life, was surprised to find 
 that he embodied also certain unruly passions and 
 keen desires, on which he had never calculated. 
 Measles, scarlet fever and other infantine com- 
 plaints parents accept as in the course of nature ; 
 but when I told a father he had only to put 
 himself back to the age of indiscretion, and to 
 expect of his son all the folly and the wrong- 
 he a dedness that cropped up then in him, and in all 
 others in his experience at the same time of life, 
 it appeared quite a new idea to him. 
 
 9*
 
 132 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 One of my acquaintance told his father, "I 
 never asked to be born, and to bring a fellow 
 nolens volens into an expensive world like this, 
 with a big National debt and an income tax, and 
 then to say you have not a screw to give him, is too 
 bad by a great deal." " Blessed is the man that 
 hath his quiver full of them," says the Psalmist. 
 True, if each stands ready with a bow and arrow 
 to fight for you, "when the enemy is at the 
 gate," but not when the duns are at the door ; 
 for then the reputed " blessings " are more like 
 blisters. 
 
 Certainly, at college, you see men at the most 
 unreasonable season of human existence. Not one 
 man in a hundred at that age ever thinks what his 
 father can afford. Men are as thankless for their 
 allowance and expenses as they are for the light 
 or the air, and as little think where it comes from. 
 Who can reflect on his past self at college but as 
 a thoughtless, selfish piece of animal nature ! A 
 mad doctor once reported to me of a patient " He 
 has recovered as to all that class of feelings which 
 relate to himself; but it will take a little longer to 
 make him sane as to the more disinterested 
 feelings." The two classes of feeling are so 
 separate! In youth you have the former pre- 
 dominating, as with so many young maniacs.
 
 OUT GROWING SELFISHNESS. 133 
 
 The trials and responsibilities of life happily are 
 an education for the better feelings in later years, 
 nor is anything so likely to make a father truly 
 penitent for the past, as when he identifies his own 
 self-pleasing nature and all the follies of his 
 younger days now mirrored in his son.
 
 CHAPTEE VIL 
 
 OF CERTAIN CHAEACTEES, MOEE AS CAUTIONS THAN AS 
 GOOD EXAMPLES. 
 
 BUT as to my hours of late reading, they were 
 sometimes disturbed by what was called " storm- 
 ing the oak " by some idle fellows on my stair- 
 case ; this was the bell staircase in Trinity, with 
 rooms over the College Hall. Our rooms had 
 double doors, the outer an oak door, a very strong 
 one ; still, the peckers from the coal-bins, which 
 contained a supply of fuel outside our rooms, were 
 storming tools irresistible. But, save some little 
 row when an entry was made, I never heard of 
 any very serious affair like that of " drawing " out 
 of bed, and smashing of furniture by which an 
 unpopular man is persecuted in a regiment. 
 
 I had one adventure, however, which I may say 
 I rather brought on myself. I had caused a little 
 resentment in Alex, a man before mentioned as 
 sponging on every one. A friend told me that 
 after many kind and neighbourly offices on my
 
 A STORMING PARTY. 135 
 
 part, Alex had boasted in a party, of the use he 
 had made of me as his kettle-boiler. This was too 
 much ; so the next time his scout brought, one hot 
 morning, Alex's kettle to be boiled, I said sharply, 
 "Take that away." "Take it where, sir ? Master 
 
 has no fire." " Take it to " and I am afraid 
 
 I named a place where it would be likely to 
 boil rather fast. Alex looked rather glum next 
 time I saw him. And one night, espying a lot of 
 men of his party, suspiciously standing together, 
 bent on mischief, I felt sure mine was the oak to 
 be stormed, so I said a word in passing to old Dick 
 Colley, who had lately suffered in the same way, 
 from the same party, and we resolved on an 
 ambuscade to attack the enemy in the rear. We 
 stood on the landing just above the stairs they 
 must pass, and no sooner did they begin to batter 
 than I threw the contents of a pitcher, and Colley 
 jerked, high in the air, some small coal and dust 
 from his coal box. There was at once a panic 
 all were nearly in the dark and on the principle 
 of ignotum pro mirifico fear magnified the danger, 
 and all rushed, wet and bespattered, away. But 
 first a heavy coal-pick was hurled forward. I 
 wonder what the verdict would have been if this 
 had resulted, as was quite posssible, in a fatal 
 accident. The Providence supposed to watch over
 
 136 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 drunken men has often appeared to me to be 
 watchful indeed. I could name one of the foremost 
 men of the day, who, when at college, in a passion, 
 threw a heavy candlestick across the table. As no 
 harm was done, this was allowed to pass, but, 
 considering all things, serious quarrels were in my 
 time almost unknown. I did know a case of two 
 men squaring at each other in the quadrangle, but 
 friends soon stopped them, even if they would have 
 actually come to blows. Though duels, at this 
 time, were still in fashion so much so, that no 
 man could show his face in society who failed to 
 send or to accept a challenge under certain circum- 
 stances yet the only case I heard was one rather 
 before my day at college. My old friend Weston 
 was second to one of the parties. A blow had 
 been struck and must be expiated. " I did all I 
 could," said Weston, " to arrange that there should 
 be no balls in the pistols, but we were too closely 
 watched ; however, I took twelve as long paces as 
 I could and stipulated both should fire instantly on 
 the word being given ; then I took them by sur- 
 prise, and shouted " Fire "' before either quite 
 expected it. The combatants were cousins ; and 
 I suppose each was so glad he had not shot the 
 other, that, treating the seconds as nothing, they 
 rushed and cordially shook hands in a moment."
 
 DUELLING MADE RIDICULOUS. 137 
 
 There was a later case, when two men fought, 
 and went home and breakfasted with each other ; 
 reminding me of a solicitor's queer story of two 
 youths one his client who, charged with an in- 
 tention of making a breach of the peace, were 
 locked up about mid-day, while he was finding bail, 
 and when he returned to them, about eight in the 
 evening, he found hunger had overcome wrath. 
 They had sent out for a beef steak and a bottle of 
 wine, and were as jolly as two children over a 
 cake. 
 
 But I have one case more amusing. One 
 childish coxcomb, who had been soundly rated for 
 some impudence, wrote a formal challenge. This 
 the friends of the party challenged considered so 
 truly absurd, that they agreed with one who 
 volunteered as his second on the best possible 
 means of brininnof " the man of honour " to his 
 
 O o 
 
 senses. A hostile meeting was fixed near the place 
 where they used to bathe in Port Meadow. The 
 two seconds agreed to put no balls in the pistols, 
 and that the party challenged should be at the 
 expense of a sixpenny pot of currant jelly to stain 
 his waistcoat and shirt, and that at the moment of 
 firing he should fall down as if wounded, and 
 behave as much like a dead man as possible. The 
 valorous youth was allowed to suffer all the horrors
 
 138 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 of suspense for one long day, and one night's 
 dreams of sudden death or amputation, being 
 expelled or being hanged, before he came up to 
 the scratch, and then, when he saw his late 
 companion fall, his coat fly open, his gasping and 
 putting his hand to his heart, and, above all, the 
 clotted currant jelly, he dropped on the ground in 
 a perfect agony of horror, and, after a time, got 
 out, " What would he do or suffer to see the dead 
 man alive again!" Whereupon up jumped the 
 slain, and applying a finger of scorn to a nose of 
 contempt, he helped to drag the unhappy mourner 
 down to the water's edge, where having ducked him 
 to cool his courage, they left him the laughing- 
 stock of his college, and, like the Fair Penitent, to 
 " think of what was past, and sigh alone." 
 
 But duels, if dispensed with at college, were now 
 few and far between anywhere, till, ten years later, 
 in 1845, they came to an end. By this time, one 
 duel had taken place, when Colonel Fawcett shot 
 Lieutenant Munro, his brother-in-law ; this made 
 duelling revolting and another fatal case at 
 Putney, between two low fellows, which made it 
 vulgar. A year's imprisonment was inflicted in 
 the latter case. Two years after this, Sir Eobert 
 Inglis and a large number of men in high society, 
 formed a little Peace Society, and subscribed their
 
 NOTED DUELS. 139 
 
 name to a declaration that they would never act, 
 either as principal or second, in a duel from that 
 time forth. This was supported by Prince Albert, 
 and soon an order was sent from the Horse Guards, 
 that it should be sufficient vindication of an 
 officer's honour if, in case of offence given or taken, 
 he should refer the case to his colonel and his 
 brother-officers. Imagine how necessary this was 
 when, not long before, Lord Hardinge, who had 
 seconded the Duke of Wellington against the Earl 
 of Winchelsea, said, on hearing of a bloodless duel, 
 not that he was glad nothing had happened, but 
 that he thought the offended party ought to have 
 had another shot ! 
 
 Pitt, Fox, Canning, Castlereagh, all fought 
 duels Peel challenged, though he did not fight 
 Castlereagh, and challenged O'Connell too. But 
 O'Connell had fought and killed Mr. D'Estair, and 
 " registered a vow never to fight again," but made 
 no vow not to give offence and provocation. 
 
 Now, change the scene from a state of war to 
 a state of peace, from opposing pistols on 
 Wimbledon Common to the meeting of the same 
 parties at the theatre at Oxford. Five years had 
 passed away, and at the installation of the Duke of 
 Wellington, Lord Winchelsea, was to be presented 
 and in due form advanced to shake hands with
 
 140 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 the Duke. The shouts that rang through the 
 house showed evident sympathy with the two 
 combatants, by that time reconciled. 
 
 "And what do I think of the suppression of 
 duelling ? I never heard any man who desired to 
 go back to these murderous habits, but very much 
 good came from very little evil. The fatal cases in 
 my recollection in all England were four or five ; 
 but the men kept in order the roues who now trifle 
 with your affections, and once would not dare ; 
 and other cases of solid mischief prevented are as 
 tens of thousands." 
 
 As to our rooms and sporting (closing) ouroak, 
 men used to be so careless when going out that 
 the wonder was their rooms were not more 
 frequently robbed. As to the professional 
 thieves, there was little of that convertible spoil 
 which tempts them, but of mere cribbage for 
 any errand-boy who came, there was enough ; 
 and where the blame could be so readily laid 
 on strangers, the temptation was all the greater 
 to the scouts. Scouts at Cambridge are called 
 "gyps," the Greek for vultures, and both scouts 
 and gyps are too commonly regarded as a set of 
 harpies, though really they are much the same 
 as other servants with careless masters habitually 
 reckless of waste and extravagance.
 
 COLLEGE SCOUTS. 141 
 
 In 1860, the Mayor called a public meeting, to 
 consider the state of idleness and the temptation 
 to which the junior scouts, seventy-five in number, 
 as was represented, were exposed during the June 
 vacation, by the end of which time debt and 
 difficulties had naturally embarrassed them. It 
 was decided to communicate with the hotel- 
 keepers of watering-places where extra helps 
 were likely to be required in the summer and 
 early autumn. 
 
 A scout's perquisites are multifarious not only 
 all your little goods and chattels, when you leave 
 college, but at all times they claim everything 
 left at meals, and expect the reversion of left-off 
 clothes. " Budd," said Collins, one day, " where 
 is that cold pheasant I left ? " " What them 
 bones, sir ? Trifles like that is our perquisites." 
 Youths as we were, we felt at a disadvantage 
 against these crying abuses. The scouts were 
 our waiters at dinner, and when we left the hall 
 they came in with their baskets and were entitled 
 to clear away all the joints and dishes that re- 
 mained. The reason was that their wages were 
 too low without board, and this explains another 
 charge often called extortion at college. Our 
 " Commons," of bread and butter and other 
 eatables, provided by the manciple, or college
 
 142 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 caterer, were constantly charged to us more 
 than they cost ; but we paid nothing for the 
 manciple's salary, and this was his profit for 
 his services. 
 
 Old Budd fairly reminded me that not to sport 
 my oak left a heavy responsibility on him, and 
 endangered his character. When any robbery 
 took place, as when Charlie lost a watch and 
 Edwards some rings, there was much anxiety 
 among the scouts attached to that staircase and 
 set of rooms. One young scout was discharged 
 for ill conduct, and afterwards imprisoned for 
 some slight peculation committed in his new 
 situation. The scouts generally were on the level 
 of other servants. That young scout I was much 
 interested in recognising, fifty years after, lank and 
 grey-headed, cleaning shoes, near Gray's Inn in 
 London. I could not but greet him with some 
 small remembrance. It is pleasing to find any 
 fellow- creature who has started even with us in 
 the race of life and who seems to have run in 
 parallel lines with us, if not side by side, so many 
 years. But as to dishonesty, a painful case 
 occurred at Queen's College, of a robbery com- 
 mitted by one undergraduate on another. 
 
 A man we will call Fisher after fifty years he 
 should be spared, let us hope as an altered man
 
 A SAD TALE. 143 
 
 had remarked, when he visited two of my Trinity 
 friends, as by no means of a good style, and when 
 dining with them, no credit to our college hall. 
 One day he dropped into the rooms of his friend 
 Wickens, and said that Jupper the confectioner 
 had been dunning him, and the best way was 
 always " to feed the duns," and give them further 
 orders honest, certainly, to increase the debts 
 you cannot pay ! so he meant to give a spread 
 and hoped Wickens would come. He further 
 talked of men having lost watches and money 
 from their rooms, and Wickens happened to 
 remark, " I have six five-pound notes to pay my 
 battels, and shall hide them in the basket of 
 clothes just come from the wash no one would 
 think of looking there for the money and then 
 I am your man for the promised ride to Wood- 
 stock." Fisher then proposed to construe the 
 lecture to Wickens, for he was a good scholar and 
 had a remarkable memory. His master at 
 Tiverton said Fisher could learn his lesson almost 
 in walking up to class with twice reading lines 
 of Virgil he could repeat them readily. Well, the 
 supposed friends rode to Woodstock, and on their 
 return Wickens said he had an instinctive feeling 
 all was not right, so he hurried to his basket and 
 the money was gone !
 
 144 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Such instinctive feelings are curious. We 
 sometimes arrive at conclusions, unconscious of 
 the steps which led us on. Of course there was 
 once more a stir in college. Poor old Hedges, 
 the scout, who had passed so many years carrying 
 mugs and platters from buttery to college rooms, 
 and, as he said, with no slur upon his character, 
 had now repeated losses from rooms under his 
 care. Gentlemen suspect only servants or in- 
 feriors in such cases. "Fisher," said Wickens, 
 "I always knew was not very particular as to 
 tic and extravagance. I knew also that he would 
 make very queer bets, and was considered a sharp 
 customer ; but who would think his friend could 
 steal ? " But servants think differently. Hedges 
 knew that Fisher was generally short of money, 
 and his door beset by duns, and without Latin 
 and Greek Hedges was acute as his masters. A 
 man is not the sharper for being born a gentle- 
 man. When old Weller said Sam should not 
 have been outwitted, because he had the proper 
 education of the streets, he propounded a solemn 
 truth too little considered, namely, that there is 
 a deal of learning without book learning ; a man's 
 wit can be sharpened in more ways than one. So 
 when Hedges heard all the particulars, and how 
 Fisher had been informed of the ingenious mode of
 
 THE THIEF DETECTED. 145 
 
 hiding the money, Hedges began to think that the 
 saying, " Those who hide can find," had some 
 indirect reference to Mr. Fisher. Still further 
 Hedges learnt that, at Woodstock, Fisher had left 
 Wickens for some time, very unlike the habit of 
 two friends out for a ride ; also that afterwards 
 Fisher showed several sovereigns when paying for 
 luncheon : this looked as if he had changed a note 
 at the hotel. Hedges thought he had now evidence 
 enough, so for further enquiry, he went to Wood- 
 stock, found and identified the stolen note by the 
 number, and brought back the waiter who had 
 changed it to confront Fisher. 
 
 Wickens became very much enraged ; he went 
 to the tutor and said he should at once apply for 
 a summons, and was with difficulty prevented 
 from doing so by the tutor's saying that he would 
 be answerable for the money stolen if Wickens 
 would not prosecute. Fisher was confined to 
 his room till his friends could be informed of 
 the painful occurrence. His mother was a 
 widow, doubtless having had no little trouble 
 w T ith such a son. Next term we heard the 
 distressing news that the blow was too sudden 
 and too agonizing for a mother ; the poor lady 
 had lost her reason ! 
 
 There was always some man at Oxford who had 
 VOL. i. 10
 
 146 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 either stolen money or done something disgraceful 
 at school, and the story followed him, his old 
 school-fellows being shy of him. Certainly if this 
 applied to an elder boy of the age to leave school 
 for college, it might be right and reasonable to 
 make him feel his disgrace ; but that mere 
 children should find that the misdeeds of their 
 childhood had followed them I thought much 
 to be regretted. I remember some particular 
 inquiries being once made of an Eton tutor, 
 from Magdalen College, as to a youth said to 
 have left Eton in disgrace, and the reply was 
 that the tutor declined to enter into particulars, 
 but that there was a difference between a 
 school and a college, and believed there was 
 no sufficient reason for objecting to him. This 
 man was considerate ; the pupil fully justified this 
 remark by a very creditable career. Still, a 
 blot on one's escutcheon at a public school is 
 serious ; and yet more so at college. Less 
 allowance can then be made for youth, and 
 ill deeds are enacted before a larger audience. 
 It is wonderful how prone men are to spread 
 a painful story ; it is not always from pure 
 malevolence, but rather from love of talking in 
 a sensational way. Vice is more interesting 
 than virtue ; even full-grown children might
 
 HOW THE MIND EXPANDS. 147 
 
 honestly confess that they like stories about 
 naughty boys better than stories about good 
 boys. 
 
 As a compensation for the uproarious set of 
 Trinity, there was a religious set in college. We 
 called them the Saints, they were all very Low 
 Church. Tractarianism was in its infancy. 
 There were no High Church saints in those 
 days. If men were less thoughtless and more 
 serious than their neighbours, they were reduced 
 for religious parties and sympathy to the psalm- 
 singing class or none. In those days the Bible 
 was commonly regarded as much one book as 
 
 v O 
 
 Homer ; literal and verbal inspiration was the 
 answer to all inquiries. Indeed, the biblical 
 ignorance of those days would surprise any in- 
 telligent people now. Milman's critical remarks 
 in his History of the Jews had excited grave 
 doubt not merely of his orthodoxy, but of his faith. 
 The present Bishop of London's reception, at Exeter, 
 twelve years since, would have been mild compared 
 to what he would have encountered in the times 
 I am describing. There was a strong opposi- 
 tion to Dr. Hampden, as bishop-designate of 
 Hereford, at that time, for what would have 
 been thought a very slight touch of originality 
 now. The very terms in use Latitudinarian 
 
 10*
 
 148 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 for one who deviated in the least from one 
 narrow track, and Rationalism for one who 
 exercised his own common sense and under- 
 standing in biblical interpretation bear witness 
 to the changes we have lived to see. At 
 Cambridge, religious men had preachers a little 
 more to their taste especially Simeon, who 
 was far more reasonable that most of the 
 Evangelical party ; he really touched the hearts 
 of Cantabs, and at the same time there was, 
 Melville, who, said Mr. Yarde " could make 
 tears run down the cheeks of those dry old 
 Dons " almost as much of a miracle as Moses 
 striking water from the rocks. But at Oxford 
 we had the most unemotional Theology and little 
 else. Some years before, Dr. Tatham of Lincoln 
 was, indeed, in one sense, a moving preacher, but 
 moving rather to laughter. Once he said he 
 wished " that all the Garm:in critics were drowned 
 in the German Ocean." Old Mr. Blatter, the 
 bookseller, told me he once heard Tatham say 
 from the pulpit, while depreciating the University 
 studies, " Take care, that what with your Little Go 
 and your Great Go, it does not prove a By-Go." 
 Once we had a very puzzling sermon at St. 
 Mary's, on the subject of Evidences, with "The 
 Christian says this and the atheist says that,"
 
 THE POET SHELLEY. 149 
 
 when, as the present Bishop C came out 
 
 of church, he said, " The atheist had the best 
 of the argument this morning." This reminds 
 me of an anecdote of the poet Shelley, related 
 to me also by Mr. Slatter : 
 
 " When Shelley's name was entered at Univer- 
 sity College, his father, Sir Timothy, introduced 
 him to me as one who would require no little 
 printing during academical career. Nor was it 
 long before the poetical son brought me poetry 
 for the press ; and in a little time he became 
 so well-known to my shopmen, that they little 
 heeded what he did. One day he came with a 
 bundle of pamphlets, merely saying, " You can 
 sell these," and scattered them in my windows 
 and on my counter and side table. No one 
 examined them or even saw the title. Some little 
 time after, coming down into the shop, I 
 perceived a well known Don reading one of the 
 pamphlets, with arched eyebrows and looking 
 unutterable things ; seeing me, he said, " Mr. 
 Slatter, you must be mad! You will be hooted 
 out of the University. ' The Necessity of 
 Atheism,' indeed! and you are selling such im- 
 piety." I soon discovered and explained what 
 had happened, and as there was, at that time, 
 an eminent barrister on the circuit, lodging
 
 150 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 with me, he heard what had occurred, and 
 said, " Send for the young man. He must have 
 a warning ; I will open upon him." Soon Shelley 
 came, looking quite unconcerned ; after a few 
 words from me, my friend enlarged on the poison 
 he was spreading broadcast, and the serious 
 consequences to himself if known to the college 
 authorities. "Why as to that," said Shelley, 
 "the Vice-Chancellor has a copy already, and 
 there was one to be put on the breakfast-table of the 
 President of every college in Oxford." He said, 
 among other things, " These are no new ideas 
 of mine. I have long entertained the same 
 views, and what is more, I have a sister, whom 
 I have made as d d an atheist as myself." This 
 is the exact history of the circumstances under 
 which Shelley left the University. I have the 
 pleasure of knowing some of the sisters one 
 still survives, but no one doubts her orthodox 
 opinions. 
 
 As to the so-called Saints, this set consisted of 
 two or three who held together and were chiefly 
 distinguished by their absurdly preaching to every 
 one else, and sometimes having the worst of the 
 argument. Certain truths, and promises divine, 
 they would enunciate in too wide a sense, and most 
 erroneously in a temporal sense ; on such occasions
 
 STRANGE NOTIONS. 151 
 
 to hear the peculiarly temporal replies of those they 
 called " worldly men " was amusing. Bound once 
 maintained, " Whatever you shall ask in prayer, 
 believing, you shall receive." " Yes," said Briggs, 
 " but ' believing ' is all the difficulty. Now, I am 
 backing the ' favourite ' for the Derby if I could 
 4 believe ' he'd win, you say it would be all right, 
 but I can't." " The doctrine is carried too far," 
 said Charlie ; " it's no use praying for money, for 
 I tried it first thing after a sermon I once heard. 
 And it's no good when out fishing ; I tried that 
 too, and never had a bite." 
 
 Poor Eound was all but plucked for his divinity, 
 and found that piety and theology were widely 
 different things. However, there he has been, near 
 Portsmouth, working away these thirty years 
 honestly, piously, and most usefully too in a 
 parish of poor fishermen, where I renewed our old 
 acquaintance with no little interest. 
 
 One of those whom Eound called the worldly 
 and the carnal men Tom Walker I found, years 
 after, as parson of a rural parish. While I was on 
 a visit in Dorsetshire, near Blanktown, I heard of 
 much religious dissension ; the people there were 
 split in two parties, the Walkerites, and the non- 
 Walkerites ; the partisans and the opponents of one 
 Mr. Walker, who was ultra-Tractarian, who was
 
 152 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 setting up crosses and lighting candles in broad day- 
 light, with floral ornaments, varied with the varying 
 seasons. The non-Walkerite party was up in arms 
 and declared he was preaching Churchianity, in- 
 stead of Christianity. Still further, this church 
 militant was already involved in law with citations 
 and monitions and all the curious processes of the 
 Ecclesiastical Court, instituted by people who found 
 too late that Tom had no money to lose and " it's 
 ill suing a Highlander for his breeks." 
 
 As Walker is a common name, I little thought 
 of our old friend of Trinity, till Vincent, another 
 old Trinity man, met me and remarked, " What 
 asses people were to follow in all his vagaries ; the 
 most utter ignoramus, who had merely got hold of 
 the catchwords of a party." 
 
 " Surely," I said, " it is not Tom Walker of 
 Trinity ? Why, he was the most ignorant fellow 
 read less and smoked more than any man in 
 college." 
 
 " The same the man of many plucks. He 
 passed at last, I verily believe out of pity for his 
 wife, for you remember he left for a year and re- 
 turned to apartments in Beaumont Street, as a 
 married man. He has been a dunce and an ass all 
 his life, I was with the great donkey at the Peck- 
 ham Academy before Oxford days. Being ques-
 
 A PRETENDER IN THE CHURCH. 153 
 
 ioned one day at Bible- class about Joseph and his 
 Brethren, Tom was asked about ' Fall not out by the 
 way ; ' he said, ' Perhaps they had no tail-boards to 
 the waggons mentioned, and they might tumble 
 out.' " 
 
 Before long I met a man on the road with a 
 white tie and straight-collared coat, which ill as- 
 similated with that peculiar style and seat on a 
 horse which was never learnt by quiet rides on the 
 Queen's highway. After some little reference to 
 college days, he said, " I suppose you have heard 
 all about me. We are all High Church here ; very 
 busy this Easter with church decorations. All 
 people were Low Church, except those who were 
 nothing at ah 1 , when we were at old Trinity. 
 Tractarians were then finding it out ; but High 
 Church proper could scarcely be said to be invented. 
 It is a fine thing for women ; something for them 
 to do to work monograms, festoon flowers, and 
 help in the choir, and it leads to flirting ecclesiastical 
 no little. I always was musical ; my chants and 
 introits are pronounced first rate. Apostolical 
 succession and " notes of the true Church " are the 
 thing ; it puzzles the dissenters to come up to 
 that." 
 
 After some sly insinuation of mine, he said, " The 
 people look up to me here ; they know nothing
 
 154 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 about those plucks at College. You have read 
 about the doings in the Ecclesiastical Court ; the 
 opposition can spend their money if they like. I 
 take no notice of them. I enter no appearance, 
 light my pipe with their citations, and do not 
 spend a penny. But they advertise me gratis, 
 and herald the Eev. Thomas Gerald Walker's 
 name all over England. The Guardian and the 
 Record are full of it every week." 
 
 The truth was a certain clique in Walker's parish, 
 greeting this vent for their superflous energy, would 
 not listen to the sound advice that the silly fellow 
 had better be left alone, so they really made the 
 land ring with his name by ecclesiastical proceed- 
 ings. Their expenses were thousands, Tom's were 
 not one penny. He made fun for everyone who 
 called with each process that was served him, and 
 at the conclusion of this long affair he showed me 
 as a curiosity the bill of costs, quite a volume, in- 
 curred by the Plaintiffs, for him not to pay. And 
 when a distress was put into the house for costs, 
 he amused himself and friends with the bailiff; for all 
 the goods and chattels were not his but his mother's ! 
 
 This is not the only case in which I have seen 
 the noted dunces of college rise up in some distant 
 place as very oracles in some great question of 
 Church or State;
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 
 HOW SOME MEN ASPIEED TO THE HONOURS OF " THE 
 IRELAND SCHOLAESHIP," AND OTHEKS CKAMMED FOK 
 A "PASS." 
 
 OF all the sets the Scholars' set was, as it should be, 
 sober, intellectual, and in every sense improving. 
 The present Lord Selborne, then Eoundell Palmer 
 came up with a high reputation as head of Win- 
 chester. Cardwell, Lowe and some of his school- 
 fellows, with the late Archbishop Tait, were fre- 
 quent guests at the Scholars' table. Well do I 
 remember seeing Palmer returning to college, after 
 receiving the announcement that he was elected 
 Dean Ireland's scholar. This prize marked the 
 best man of his day in scholarship, the contest 
 being open to all the winners of other scholarships 
 included. Dr. Scott was then beaten for the second 
 time, as I think he was once more, and won at the 
 fourth attempt. There was also among the Scholars 
 John Thomas, examining chaplain to Archbishop 
 Sumner, and Sir. J. K. Eickards, well known at the
 
 156 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 bar as late counsel to the Speaker, an office 
 now held by the Honourable Chandos Leigh. 
 A few only of the steadier and the reading 
 men of the college were in this set, and the most 
 part lived as men who duly valued their academi- 
 cal advantages. Thomas Legh Claughton, Bishop 
 of St. Alban's, had just passed into the number of 
 the fellows of Trinity. John Thomas was a man of 
 more talent than steady application. On dit he 
 never would have sent in his Latin poem, which 
 won the prize, had not Palmer and others, who 
 admired what they read of it, shut him up in his 
 room and insisted on his finishing it. The gifts of 
 nature are more equally distributed than they seem. 
 Gladstone, two years before, was second (proxime 
 accessit) for the "Ireland." The prize was then 
 won by Brancker, a Shrewsbury boy, matriculated 
 but not yet in residence, who was advised by his 
 friend Scott to try, if only for practice, but the boy 
 beat him as well as others, and won ! Dr. Butler 
 of Shrewsbury considered Branker worthy to be 
 classed with his old pupils the Kennedys. 
 
 Dr. Butler must have had some extraordinary 
 pupils at that- time. The Eev. James Hildyard 
 writes : " Brancker actually took the Ireland 
 prize while still a boy at school, and three 
 places below me. Butler was so pleased at it
 
 GLADSTONE AT COLLEGE. 157 
 
 that on the board on which were enrolled all 
 the honours taken by his pupils at College, he 
 caused that of Brancker to be painted (to use 
 his own words) Literis aureis majusculis, in gold 
 instead of black letters, and in uncials instead of 
 pica. Mr. Gladstone's account of the examina- 
 tion in a letter to his friend Jennings, cannot fail 
 to interest : 
 
 "I write to give you an account of 
 
 o */ 
 
 the strange result of the Ireland scholarship 
 examination. The successful candidate is 
 Brancker, of Wadham. Perhaps you do not 
 know who Brancker is. He is a Shrewsbury 
 boy, i.e., has not yet left school, and sent up 
 here to stand by way of practising himself, and 
 to return probably by to-night's mail. This is 
 all very funny. I now proceed to give you 
 details. In the rear of Brancker is Scott and me, 
 and Yowler Short told us plainly the following 
 news. That he was very sorry he could not 
 congratulate either of us, and that it had been an 
 extremely near thing, and that in consequence the 
 trustees had determined to present us both with 
 books, that ' taste,' which, he said, was a word 
 difficult to define, had gained Brancker his victory, 
 and then he said, ' Indeed I do not know what 
 the result might have been if you two had not written
 
 158 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 such long answers I ' Scott then asked him to 
 furnish some particulars. He abused him for 
 free translation, and me for my essay, on which 
 he said his memorandum was 'desultory beyond 
 belief,' also for throwing dust into the examiner's 
 eyes, like a man, who when asked who wrote ' God 
 save the King ? ' answered ' Thompson wrote Rule 
 Britannia.' But indeed, he said he had as many bad 
 marks against Brancker as against us Scott says 
 Brancker is not nearly as good a scholar as he 
 was himself when he came up ; but I hear in a 
 roundabout way a report that Butler thinks 
 Brancker the best pupil he has had since Kennedy. 
 The oddest thing, however, of all that Short said, 
 was his exposition of Brancker 's merits. ' He 
 answered all the questions short, and most of them 
 right! The old Growler " (Vowler Short was the 
 real name) "was very kind, and said he had no 
 doubt we should find the disappointment ' all for 
 the best,' to which one of us somewhat demurred. 
 When he asseverated vehemently that it was so, 
 the other assented. Upon this he exclaimed, 
 ' Aye, but you don't believe it, I know ! ' He 
 shook hands with us most heartily, and, though 
 he moralized rough-shod, certainly behaved in a 
 very friendly way." 
 
 As to the Ireland scholarship, the most decided
 
 THE IRELAND SCHOLARSHIP. 159 
 
 victory, of a man distancing all his competitors, 
 \vas that of Linwood, nephew of Miss Linwood, 
 whose exhibition in Leicester Square of needle- 
 work (copies of the largest paintings) was, about 
 this time, one of the sights of London. Linwood, 
 about nineteen years of age, surrounded by 
 twenty candidates, most of them already winners 
 of prizes, said, in the hearing of my friend 
 Dickenson, "I know I shall win. True, Holden 
 of Balliol was second last time ; still though 
 inferior in one point I shall make it up in 
 others ; and I shall win." One paper set was 
 an imaginary speech of Medea, in Greek 
 iambics ; the other candidates wrote from 20 
 to 25 lines ; Linwood wrote 99, only one short 
 of 100! Soon after he contested the Latin scholar- 
 ship, expressed the same confidence, and won. 
 He has since published an edition of Sophocles 
 and a Lexicon to .ZEschylus ; he also edited Musse 
 Oxonienses. In all examinations much depends 
 on luck, however much on merit. A scholar of 
 Balliol was greatly assisted by having the same 
 piece of Shakespeare, for Greek verse, which he 
 had written under Kennedy's correction at School, 
 A candidate at Trinity, set to translate into Latin 
 elegiacs, " By the Waters of Babylon we sat down 
 and wept," showed that he remembered Buchanan's
 
 160 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 rendering of this the best of all Buchanan's Latin 
 psalms. 
 
 As to Gladstone and his compeers, I may 
 venture to add an extract from " My Life as an 
 Author," by Martin Tupper. 
 
 " Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle class at 
 Christchurch was comprised almost wholly of 
 men who have since become celebrated, some in 
 a remarkable degree ; and, as we believe that so 
 many names, afterwards attaining to great dis- 
 tinction, have rarely been associated at one 
 lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, 
 it may be allowed to one who counts himself the 
 least and lowest of the company to pen this brief 
 note of those old Aristotelians. 
 
 "Let the central figure be Gladstone ever 
 from youth up the beloved and admired of many 
 personal intimates (although some may be politi- 
 cally his opponents). Always the foremost 
 man, warm-hearted, earnest, hard-working, and 
 religious, he had a following even in his teens ; 
 and it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and 
 keen -intelligences of Eton and Christchurch 
 formed themselves into a small social sort of club, 
 styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, 
 the ' W. E. G.' 
 
 " Next to Gladstone Lord Lincoln used to sit
 
 A DISTINGUISHED LECTURE ROOM. 161 
 
 his first parliamentary patron at Newark, and 
 through life to death his friend. We all know 
 how admirably in many offices of State the late 
 Duke of Newcastle served his country, and what a 
 good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful 
 Telemachus in America. 
 
 " Canning may be mentioned thirdly ; then a 
 good-looking youth, with classic features and a 
 florid cheek, since gone to ' the land of the 
 departed,' after having healed up the wounds of 
 India as her Governor-General. Next to the 
 writer, one on each side, sat two more Governors- 
 General in future, though then both younger sons 
 and commoners, and now both also gone to their 
 reward elsewhere, these were Bruce, afterwards 
 Lord Elgin, and Eamsey, Lord Dalhousie ; the one 
 famous from Canada to China, the other noted for 
 his triumphs in the Punjaub. When at Toronto 
 in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the splendid 
 hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture- 
 room here depicted was mentioned as ' a rare 
 gathering of notables.' Lord Abercorn was of 
 the class, a future viceroy ; and Lord Douglas, 
 lately Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, 
 and who married a Princess of Baden ; and if 
 Lord Waterford was infrequent in his attendance, 
 at least he was eligible, and should not be 
 VOL. i. 11
 
 162 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 omitted as a various sort of eccentric celebrity. 
 Then Phillimore was there, now our Dean of the 
 Arches ; Scott and Liddell, both heads of houses, 
 and even then conspiring together for their great 
 dictionary. Curzon too (lately Lord de la Zouch) 
 was at the table, meditating Armenian and 
 Levantine travels, and longing in spirit for those 
 Byzantine MSS. preserved at Parham, where 
 the writer has delighted to inspect them ; how 
 nearly Tischendorf was anticipated in his fortunate 
 find of that earliest Scripture no one knows better 
 than Lord Zouch, who must have been close upon 
 that great and important dicovery. Doyle, now 
 Professor of Poetry, Hill of Mathematics, Vaughan 
 of History all were of this wonderful class ; as 
 also the Earl of Selkirk, celebrated as a Mathema- 
 tician ; Bishops Hamilton, Denison and Words- 
 worth, and Cornewall Lewis, late Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, and Kynaston, Head Master of St. 
 Pauls' ; and a member of Parliament or two, as 
 for example, Leader, once popular for West- 
 minster. 
 
 " Now, other names of almost equal eminence 
 may have been here accidentally omitted, but the 
 writer will not guess at any more than 'he 
 actually recollects. Sometimes for the lecture 
 was a famous one members of other colleges
 
 OXFORD IN PATTISON' S DAY. 163 
 
 came in ; Sydney Herbert of Oriel, in particular, 
 is remembered, and if Robert Lowe, of Univer- 
 sity, was only occasionally seen, it must 
 have been that he seldom went abroad till 
 twilight " strange as stroke of his college boat ! 
 The readers of the life of Mark Pattison will 
 see that about the time- 1 entered, there was in- 
 deed much room for improvement in Oxford though 
 reformation had set in " Men not much interested 
 in classics or mathematics had nothing before 
 them but aimless, idle hours, and even in those 
 subjects there was comparatively little temptation 
 to read for honours." Pattison says of his friend, 
 Lord Coayers Osborne, that, had he lived, any 
 hope of his fulfilling his intention of reading for 
 a class was early dissipated by the demoralising 
 atmosphere of Christchurch. He was possessed 
 by the opinion of his " set," that it was unworthy 
 of a man of his position to be " a sap." " At Oriel 
 lectures were regarded as a joke or a bore, con- 
 demned by the more advanced and shirked by 
 the backward. In less than a week I was 
 entirely disillusioned as to what I was to learn 
 in an Oxford lecture room. Denison was a 
 scholar, according to the measure of those days. 
 He knew his Greek plays, and could let fall a 
 clever thing ; but I never heard any observation 
 
 11*
 
 164 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 that was not in Monk's notes. Copleston was a 
 dunce, and could teach you nothing. 
 
 Pattison dwells on the slackness of duty, the 
 slovenly teaching and personal favouritism of the 
 whole system. The election of fellows was 
 specially discreditable ; but public opinion ap- 
 proved the method, and, provided the man was, 
 or was about to be in Holy Orders, and came from 
 the specialised locality, he might be bad indeed for 
 all the rest. The fellow was elected rather for his 
 jovial qualities than for his intellectual or moral 
 merits. The colleges were clubs, and clubs to which 
 were elected only clubable men. Oriel was the 
 first college that reformed itself, requiring mental 
 gifts, and above all originality. A man must have 
 ideas in the first place, and the force to make 
 those ideas tell in the second. With these quali- 
 ties the electors cared little for the honours a man 
 had taken. Keble, Hawkins and Jenkyns were 
 double firsts, but Whateley, T. Mozley, Newman, 
 and Hurrell Froude, were all men of lower classes, 
 chosen before men who had taken higher honours 
 for original ideas. 
 
 Fifty years since a man might read for honours 
 in classics or in mathematics ; there was nothing 
 else. Two men, I remember good scholars both 
 who could not explain the mysteries of an
 
 NATURAL PHILOSOPHY NOWHERE. 165 
 
 eclipse or tell the name of the reigning family in 
 France. It was only exceptional, I allow, that 
 good scholars were more deficient than bad 
 scholars in general reading. The same intellect 
 which leads to the one study is not likely to be un- 
 accompanied with an interest and curiosity about 
 the other. Still any favourite pursuit as well as 
 classics is known to render men occasionally in- 
 different to common topics. This was so far true 
 of Alexander Dyce, of Shakespearean reputation, 
 that his friends used to say that he asked how the 
 Reform Bill was progressing six months after it 
 had passed. Still it was a decided loss to many 
 men that there were no schools and no prizes to 
 excite emulation in modern history, law, or 
 natural science. As to natural science, it had far 
 less attraction to students generally than at the 
 present time. Comparatively few believed in 
 geology ; and many said the study was worthy of 
 an infidel, as involving a questioning of the 
 Mosaic cosmogony. No wonder a Jesuit's 
 edition of Newton's " Principia " shows, by a 
 particular reservation in the preface, that even 
 mathematical demonstrations must yield to the 
 received doctrines of the Church. Dr. Buckland 
 was at this time gathering a few pupils with 
 equestrian lectures in the country around Oxford.
 
 166 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 I remember his saying that the Earl of Abingdon 
 was digging for coal in Oxford clay, but he would 
 consent to be burned, like another martyr, in the 
 Corn Market of Oxford with the first cart-load 
 which was brought out. 
 
 The " Little Go " and the " Great Go " were the 
 only two examinations in three years of residence 
 to make the idle men work in earnest. Half of 
 Horace, four Greek plays, and logic, or sometimes 
 three books of Euclid, were the usual programme. 
 The degree of proficiency exacted in classics was 
 far less than ten years after. Men like Briggs I 
 have heard examined and passed when the sum 
 total of their acquirements, whether for mental 
 formation or for useful information, was worth 
 little indeed. I used to give a little friendly 
 coaching in Latin writing to our friend the Count. 
 He did contrive to pass his Little Go, though after 
 seeing sitivationibus in some supposed Latin he 
 brought to me to correct,' I almost despaired of 
 my pupil's success in the Schools. 
 
 With men of this class, the longer at Oxford 
 the less they were likely to know. School know- 
 ledge evaporated faster than it could be replaced 
 by the mere atmosphere of college. The Little 
 Go served to cause just a little flicker in the 
 socket, to prevent the flame from quite going out
 
 THE ART OF CRAMMING. 167 
 
 by the time for the Great Go and the degree. 
 Here then came the struggle between wits dull 
 from disuse and a certain quantum of book 
 learning to be attained. Clifton, or some other 
 noted cramming " coach," was like Gull or Paget 
 to a sufferer in extremis. Briggs, Robinson, and 
 Perrott first-rate men across country and well up 
 in racing and sporting subjects but in little else 
 I well remember in this critical position. I used 
 to go from room to room during their last term 
 to judge of progress, and I used to lend no little 
 assistance. Indeed, I had some reputation in 
 amateur cramming, for on one occasion I had 
 made a hit, quite by accident I admit, but as my 
 friends were disposed to allow me credit for a 
 happy conjecture I continued to trade on the 
 reputation it gave me. I had led Tom Locke 
 through the history of David, and next day he 
 had the same in the schools ; and on another 
 occasion with Harry Green I anticipated most of 
 the questions set in logic. 
 
 Briggs, Eobinson, and Perrott had been at 
 Oxford a month before the October term began, 
 to make one final effort with a daily cram from 
 Clifton. On the first day of that term, arriving 
 about seven o'clock, and expecting to find no one 
 to speak to that evening, I was glad to have from
 
 168 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 old Budd the usual recognition and useful informa- 
 tion: 
 
 " Happy to see you again, sir. Hope you had 
 a pleasant vacation. You'll ask who's up, sir. 
 Well, there's Mr. Eound and Mr. Wandle, but 
 they're not your set, sir. But Mr. Briggs and 
 Mr. Perrott and Mr. Belton are all your friends. 
 You know all them well enough, sir. Well, 
 they're up reading for their Great Go, sir, and 
 don't seem to like the work, sir. Not much in 
 their line, is it, sir? I'm blessed if Mr. Briggs 
 don't grumble above a little every time I go to 
 put his rooms a little tidy, and if Virgil or 
 Euripides, sir, was to be learnt by cussing, Mr. 
 Briggs would pass sure enough. But you'll be 
 in time for some coffee, sir, just taken to his 
 rooms." 
 
 At once I hied to Briggs' rooms, and found him 
 and Perrott looking very seedy, with books and 
 papers shoved aside to make room for the tray of 
 cups and saucers. His room would have suited 
 Hogarth, for a picture of the idle Oxonian. Such 
 a mixture of things for play as well as for work ! 
 papers, sporting and divine ; books of divinity 
 and logic ; a lexicon, Horace and Euripides, with 
 English translations of both, covered the table. 
 Pictures of hunting, and opera dancers pirouet-
 
 CRAMMING FOR A DEGREE. 169 
 
 ting ; a fox's head ; and whips and spurs hung on 
 stags' antlers, widely branching over the fire-place, 
 marked the natural man while one scheme of 
 logic and another of types and prophecies on large 
 cards, with a list of last year's meets (of hounds) 
 pinned up in the space between, were stuck on 
 the walls below, while two fancy pipes and 
 cigars in a tumbler, with a stuffed pike and date 
 of his catching, formed the chimney ornaments. 
 
 After the usual greeting Tom said, " You've had 
 no dinner, I suppose ? The buttery will soon be 
 open for an early supper. I can give you a glass 
 of egg-flip, for Charlie is expected ; but that is 
 more than I may take. Why, my coach would 
 forbid anything stronger than tea or coffee, or 
 perhaps aperient medicine, but I tell him not to 
 draw it too mild or the body would rebel against 
 the brains. Still, we all live by rule, the rule 
 being not to get drunk. Very hard, but it can't 
 be helped it is only for a time. He says I shall 
 win if I only stick to it. I am pretty good in 
 logic, and have a slovenly notion of divinity, 
 which by luck might do, but Clifton says another 
 week's work will make it respectable ; though as to 
 my other books I'm not safe all round. But ah 1 
 this time I've had no partridge shooting, and 
 by the time I know my fate pheasants will be
 
 170 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 scarce enough. Now, my good fellow, where is 
 the good of all this stuff. Three months ago I 
 didn't know a syllogism from a predicable, and 
 as to divinity, I had only that misty notion of 
 types and prohecies you pick up in church, sup- 
 posing you listen to the sermon, though in all 
 this kind of learning the dirty boys in my father's 
 Sunday school could have beaten my head off; 
 and three months hence it will be all like last 
 year's snow. Yet without this cram there's no 
 degree ! Why, some years ago, I have heard the 
 governor say you could choose your own examiner, 
 and after a little pretence over wine and walnuts 
 you had a testamur of course. One system was 
 a deal pleasanter and not more of a sham than 
 the other." 
 
 This was true of such men as Tom Briggs. 
 The whole art of cramming is to impose on an 
 examiner to confine attention to likely subjects 
 and so supply a parrot-like set of answers, which 
 seem to imply deeper knowledge, and this they 
 would imply if the answers were the result of 
 well-digested reading, but being culled from a 
 book of questions and answers they stand for 
 little indeed. 
 
 Still, with the better class of men, a degree used 
 to imply some steady reading, no little mental
 
 THE COUNT CANNOT STAND IT. 171 
 
 discipline, and daily communication with a tutor, 
 as also with some men of superior mind in the 
 lecture-room, and generally it formed a better 
 preparation for life than any of the non-academi- 
 cal were likely to attain. 
 
 While talking with Briggs in came the Count, 
 as he said, "Just to have a look at this poor 
 grinding creature and enjoy a sense of compara- 
 tive security." " I shall have my fling till next Mid- 
 summer : though, Clifton said, if I would only 
 go steadily on, I should be pretty safe in one more 
 month but that one month would have been the 
 death of me ; so I have shied the post." 
 
 " Now, be persuaded. Take good advice ; go 
 on," I replied. 
 
 " Go on, indeed ! Why, I've stopped for a 
 week ; all those days lost in training ; the cage 
 door open, every idea has taken wing and flown 
 away by this time. Clifton must catch them 
 again at my next Go. Besides, here are Mark 
 Murrell's hounds handy for a near meet and 
 the Duke's about Bicester, and I have a chance 
 of good shooting near Abingdon all instead of 
 stewing away over these horrid . books. So I 
 intend to have my fling." 
 
 And most vigorously did the Count set about 
 for what he properly called " having a fling "
 
 172 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 pursuing pleasure without overtaking it ; for that 
 depends on a certain relation of the dainty to 
 the appetite, of the excitement to the tone and 
 spirits to respond ; sometimes the human lyre is 
 out of tune, and jars and vibrates without the 
 harmony required. If rushing from one place 
 and form of amusement to another ; if flinging 
 down the reins of self-command ; if flinging away 
 present time and thoughts of future strenua 
 inertia with all one's might and main ; if fling- 
 ing oneself out of bed into a breakfast party, 
 jolly to others but not to all, with appetite spoiled 
 by the last night's wine ; if flinging oneself thence 
 upon a horse and galloping after hounds all 
 day long, liable of course to cold drenching 
 showers by the cover's side when the hounds do 
 not find ; if flinging oneself off the horse into 
 hall and thence into a wine party, to be followed 
 by a supper spread but scarcely tasted for those 
 wild birds live more by suction and if reckless, 
 wretched and reeling, spent with fatigue and 
 exhausted with excitement, fevered with punch 
 and puffed with tobacco smoke, to fling one's 
 clothes on the ground and to fling oneself on the 
 bed if this is to have one's fling, Count Wratislaw 
 had his fling to his heart's content. 
 
 After leaving Tom Briggs, I found Belton and
 
 AN ORIGINAL STUDENT. 173 
 
 Phipps alike seedy, weary, and disgusted, as men 
 compelled to toil through subjects for which they 
 had more aversion than taste all against the 
 grain as much as the most horrible pages of the 
 old Eton grammar ever used to be to a boy. 
 
 It was a little relief to drop in on Charlie, who 
 was also up for Greats. Charlie had, I said, been 
 born with too great excitability of brain. Some 
 brains are like peas-pudding ; some men are about 
 as highly organized as a suet dumpling. Such 
 generally are the "highly proper and correct 
 characters " ; men who are less likely to go 
 wrong because there is no go in them at all. 
 But Charlie, sharp and brilliant, had wits for ever 
 in effervescence. He could rarely settle to read 
 
 till late at night, when the day's supply of animal 
 
 i 
 spirits had time to evaporate. Well, Charlie I 
 
 found about ten o'clock ; he saluted me with, 
 " Ah ! my good fellow, I heard you were just 
 come up. Here am I, digging through Virgil and 
 Euripides these are my two books and I have 
 dug up two or three things worth having. Tuus, 
 Regina quid optes explorare labor ; that is, the 
 only hard work fine ladies do is to find out what 
 the}'' want.' Some such people are more bored at 
 ordering dinner than others are in having no dinner 
 to order. Don't you wonder this piece ofVirgilian
 
 174 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 satire has never been quoted before ? Now, there 
 is another bit in Euripides I've never seen it 
 quoted ; have you ? where Medea, quite like a 
 modern lady, sums up her miseries thus : 
 
 " ' Of all animated nature we women come into 
 the world with the most wretched lot. First of all, 
 if we can't bid high for a husband we must go with- 
 out one, and at best we are the slaves of his 
 humour. And to run the risk of a bad one is the 
 sorest trial of all ; for separations are no credit to 
 us, and as to a divorce, it is out of the question.' 
 
 " The samp is the case now. The man can easily 
 make out a case for a divorce ; the woman has 
 more to prove. 
 
 " And when, perhaps, you have just come into a 
 new neighbourhood (and ladies have a poor chance 
 where they are seen every day), how can you tell 
 whom you choose as a partner for life ? If you 
 find a good one the yoke is easy and life's burden 
 light, but if a bad one you had better make a die 
 of it at once. 
 
 " Now I like that idea, that when dropped down 
 and arrived among people new, and when drawing 
 new covers on a distant visit, girls have their best 
 chance, ' but,' says Medea, ' it is quite a blind 
 bargain." And then, in a most modern strain, 
 Medea goes on to say, ' If a man is bored with
 
 READING WITHOUT A CRAMMER. 175 
 
 being at home he can get rid of ennui by going to 
 his companions, that is, his club, but our life is 
 centred in one living soul alone.' And as to the 
 men being as they boast alone exposed to the 
 dangers of war, Medea thought the ladies had some 
 set off against that, for she says : ' I would rather 
 be three times under fire than once in the straw.' ' 
 This was a sample of the spirit in which Charlie 
 read the classics. He once construed, in lecture 
 about the poor pilot Palinurus, who was a spoil for 
 the wreckers, praedam putdsset, " they took me 
 for their perquisites." 
 
 Charlie read widely, though in translations, and 
 said he liked to go, like Ulysses or JEneas, to those 
 in the shades below and hold a sweet converse 
 with departed spirits ; and thus he had enlarged 
 his acquaintances, now actually spread over some 
 two thousand years and more. 
 
 He continued, " I spend no money on Clifton or 
 other Coaches. I am as apt as possible in logic 
 by coaching Briggs and Co. My divinity I have 
 rubbed up in the same way. I advised Briggs and 
 Perrott that if they would only question each 
 other, however small their stock, they would find 
 that teaching another was the best way to learn for 
 themselves. Briggs said to me, ' How is it I can 
 remember a dozen winners of Oaks and Derbys,
 
 176 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 and all the jockeys' names, but as to the Kings of 
 Judah and of Israel I can't retain them for a day ? ' 
 He does not consider that he gives his mind to the 
 one and not to the other. But Tom Briggs, wild 
 as he is, has a very steady going father, who, Tom 
 says, ' would cut him off with a shilling, he believes, 
 if he did not pass.' The father reasons like a man of 
 business. ' Two hundred and fifty pounds a year, 
 for nearly four years, for a degree! that is, in 
 your case, Tom, for the honour of two letters B. A. 
 or M.A. after your name all the instruction there- 
 by implied vanished into thin air from three to six 
 months after date. That is all I am to have for 
 the thousand pounds spent on college educa- 
 tion. I had better have bought you an annuity 
 and kept you to my brother's office in Mineing 
 Lane.' ' So,' says Tom, ' fancy what a face he will 
 pull if this term coaching and all goes for nothing 
 aye, and tics, too ; which he has got to hear of. 
 Oh ! don't talk about it.' " 
 
 As to the tics, if Tom's mind was distracted 
 enough at all times, two or three times a day he 
 would hear a quiet step on the stairs, and then a 
 single knock, followed with " Please, sir, Mr. 
 Smoothall's account, or Mr. Cheatem's small bill," 
 one perhaps of two year's standing. 
 
 Belton, Phipps and Perrott were, in different
 
 READING FOR A PASS. 177 
 
 degrees, subject to the same pecuniary worries, for 
 however long suffering were the Oxford tradesmen 
 in my time, they always tried to make you pay 
 before you left, and for this purpose they eagerly 
 scanned the names on the examination list, quite 
 in the way of business. Debts could not come at 
 a more cruel time for what are called a Bilious 
 fever, and tic doloreux added miseries of its own 
 to the work of the schools. 
 
 As three weeks of this anxious work were pass- 
 ing, the Count would occasionally drop in ; some- 
 times about breakfast time, in red coat and overalls ; 
 sometimes with a great coat ovei** the same, all 
 splashed and mudded, on his return from a run, 
 and sometimes at supper, returned -in his buggy 
 from some theatre of strolling players in a barn, or 
 other diversion in Abingdon or Woodstock. What 
 he chiefly came for was to*see if any other man had 
 taken off his name to keep him company ; he 
 would then feel better reconciled to the thoughts 
 that he had done a silly thing. He made very 
 short visits. Sometimes he would hardly enter the 
 room, but would stand with the door in his hand, 
 or at most he would only come in and lean against 
 the fire -place and scrape his boot on the fender, 
 impatient that his friends at this critical time took 
 so little interest in his amusements. " You vote 
 VOL. i. 12
 
 178 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 me a bore," he would say. " I see you would cut 
 me, now these confounded books are in the way." 
 
 The Count, in his heart of hearts, hardly wished 
 they should get through ; not but that he was a 
 very good fellow, too good to acknowledge such 
 feelings even to himself ; but men act from mixed 
 motives, and those who understand the self-alloyed 
 sentiments of even the best of human hearts will 
 readily enter into his feelings ; for if his friends 
 were wise in reading on, he was foolish in leaving 
 off, and therefore their success could hardly fail of 
 proving an extra sting to him. 
 
 " You need not come here pretending you desire 
 our success," said Tom Phipps, " with formal good 
 wishes we should rather take as granted, when we 
 know you do not above half wish us to get through 
 after all." 
 
 " Speak for yourself," jsaid Tom Briggs. 
 
 " Thank you, Tom," said the Count ; " why, 
 Phipps, you are too hard on a fellow. Don't you 
 remember, when out shooting one day at Wood- 
 stock, saying you didn't half enjoy looking at that 
 long-tailed pheasant I had brought down, when 
 you could not touch a feather? Well, that is just 
 ivhat I feel now. A man never likes to realize 
 that he has been a fool. At all events I shall not 
 be plucked.'
 
 READING FOR A PASS. 179 
 
 " No great damage to your literary character if 
 you were," said Pliipps. " But I am getting on 
 swimmingly though the Thirty-nine Articles are 
 the bother to me. I wonder why there are so 
 many of them ? " 
 
 " Why," said Charlie, "it is all for your sins, to 
 be sure ; just forty stripes, .save one as you seem 
 smarting under the affliction." 
 
 12*
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE " GKEAT GO " AND " NO GO " AT ALL. 
 
 MY next visit was to a student of very different 
 character, to Hilton, one of the scholars who was 
 just making the last skimmings, as he said, over 
 his list of sixteen books for a first-class. 
 
 In the days of Mods and Greats, my friends may 
 be curious to see a first-class list of olden time, all 
 at once to task the memory of some fifty years 
 since. Hilton's list was Aristotle's Ethics and 
 Rhetoric, Butler's Analogy and Sermons, Herodotus, 
 Thucydides, two books of Xenophon's Hellenics, 
 First Decade of Livy, Sophocles, ^Eschylus, four 
 plays of Euripides, four plays of Aristophanes, 
 Virgil, Horace, Terence, Juvenal, and the " Annals " 
 of Tacitus. 
 
 Mods seems to be an invention to divide and 
 concentrate attention on about half at a time. 
 
 Many men tell me that they have now-a-days 
 some decided advantages in getting up their 
 books ; that they have lexicons, notes, and various
 
 ON SOUND READING. 181 
 
 facilities now, which we did not in my time 
 possess. I reply that such facilities are also 
 hindrances. 
 
 Hilton had correct views on such matters. No 
 lexicon, he said, can give those nice shades of 
 meaning which you may perceive for yourself by 
 comparison of passages, and proving in effect a 
 lexicon to yourself. Of lexicons nothing is more 
 true than the old Greek proverb, " A big book is 
 a great nuisance." I remember Dr. Giles, who 
 afterwards wrote a lexicon, boasted, when at 
 Oxford, of the very few words he ever wanted a 
 lexicon to explain. And what are your ingenious 
 grammars and notes to Sophocles, JEschylus, &c. ? 
 They are accessories, I admit, but only accessories 
 after the fact that is, until you are familiar with 
 the forms and phrases on which they comment, and 
 not before, you cannot digest them. Though 
 when, and only when, so familiar, they serve 
 usefully to confirm and to give form and ex- 
 pression to your own observations. So wisely did 
 John Locke say, " Grammar (that is, anything 
 beyond nouns and verbs) should come at the end 
 of education, and not at the beginning ; as it 
 should be used as the analysis of language you 
 already know." 
 
 This will show what kind of a scholar was
 
 182 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Hilton. But Hilton had a strong stimulus to 
 exertion. I knew Hilton's family they were very 
 poor and his private history, of exceeding merit 
 and self-denial. His father, the vicar of New- 
 church, had been through life one of those ne'er- 
 do-wells who are a heart-ache to all their relations. 
 Eeckless and extravagant at first, he had recourse 
 to money lenders, which, as usual, made bad 
 worse, and resulted in a sequestration of his living ; 
 and but for the fact that his son Hilton had won 
 the esteem of all who knew him, Hilton's talents 
 might have been poorly cultivated. But there was 
 a maiden aunt in the family who had nursed him 
 as a baby, and ever after found a sphere for her 
 maternal instincts in the sister's child. This good 
 creature in most families there is one could 
 scrape together 600, which with a Trinity 
 scholarship, made up enough for the necessities, 
 but left no margin over for anv of the follies of 
 
 O / 
 
 Oxford. A fellowship of about 200 a year 
 Hilton considered depended on his first-class ; he 
 then could take pupils and keep house with a 
 favourite sister, and insure her some comfort and 
 diversion too, so necessary amid all the domestic 
 worries daily arising from the vagaries of the hare- 
 brained father. Hilton was truly self-denying. I 
 was not the only one who, deeply sympathizing
 
 READING FOR A DEGREE. 183 
 
 and liking the society of so good a fellow, used to 
 ask him to the Magdalen ground, to bat and bowl 
 by turns in cricket practice ; or to take an oar on 
 the river ; and sometimes he had the loan of a 
 horse from friends, who were well aware that 
 Hilton felt he had no right to any recreation which 
 cost him a shilling. 
 
 It is therefore easy to imagine what mixed 
 motives, what feelings of a more generous kind 
 than the mere ambition of other reading men, 
 surged in the breast of Eobert Hilton. The whole 
 
 o 
 
 family watched and listened to every anticipation 
 of his success, and had occasion indeed to be 
 anxious for his future. Hilton felt that on his 
 class in this examination the mainstay of the home 
 might depend. Such striving men used to be 
 common enough to keep each other in countenance 
 at Cambridge, but less so at Oxford where Hilton's 
 position among men in more easy circumstances 
 had peculiar temptations and difficulties. 
 
 "It is an anxious time," said Hilton, as he 
 turned over the leaves, looking for the passages he 
 had marked with D, for difficult. " No man," he 
 said, " can be equally ready with every part of 
 sixteen books ; and who can tell how far he may 
 be fortunate in the questions or passages to try his 
 reading for three long years ? "
 
 184 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 I remarked that he looked rather pale, and as if 
 rest was much wanted. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " but I am told this is the 
 common lot of all reading men, such is the brain 
 work of these last days of preparation. But think 
 of the zest with which I shall read when it is no 
 more to satisfy examiners, and as it were to screw 
 up my mind to the measure of theirs, when this 
 crisis of my life is over. Eeading for a class they say 
 is discipline, a- preparation for the dry work of life." 
 
 " Suppose you go to the bar," said Short, " a 
 solicitor may bring you a brief of dry facts say 
 that John Doe broke Eichard Eoe's head, the 
 provocation being perhaps a long story of intricate 
 parish matters, and all this you must master with 
 far more accuracy than the details of a fight in 
 Thucydides, ready for the court next morning. 
 A class man is ready trained for the dry work, 
 while a man who is only used to pick and choose, 
 reading for his own improvement, as you would 
 say, would be unfit for the practice. Again, in a 
 statesman's life, see what facts and figures of the 
 least interesting kind form by far the greater part 
 of a life which some suppose to be all scientific 
 diplomacy or legislative. So," argued Short, " all 
 life is reading up to examinations of some kind ; 
 your competitors in all professions are your
 
 OUR PARTY FINDS A FRIEND. 185 
 
 examiners, ready to hit a weak point, and soon 
 see whether you have learnt your lesson ! " True, 
 too true ; but this is anything but a pleasant 
 prospect to a man of literary tastes. 
 
 " In other words," I said, " you must agree with 
 Hodge, when he said he began to find that ' this 
 here world is not all beer and skittles.' ' 
 
 The time now drew near ; about four days 
 remained. Already that long list of candidates, 
 in which men feel nervous in reading their own 
 names, had appeared on the doors of the schools 
 and in college halls. You have only to divide the 
 names into sixes, to see when your turn comes 
 for vivd voce. And now Belton, Phipps, and 
 Perrott are surprised with an invitation to break- 
 fast with Isaac Williams, who, my youthful friends 
 may be reminded, was author of the " Cathedral," 
 and one of the originators of the then new Oxford 
 Tract party. 
 
 " The idea of Williams asking us," said Belton. 
 " Why, he would like to fill the college with one 
 half reading men like Hilton, and the other half 
 with saints like Eound. He began very civil to us 
 as freshmen, but after that row in the Count's 
 rooms, and finding we cut both chapel and lecture 
 with every excuse we could invent, all of a sudden 
 we found ourselves no longer in his classes."
 
 186 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 The explanation was that Short had the sense to 
 see that the rougher class of men had better be 
 handed over to him and the more promising and 
 milder set left to Williams. 
 
 " And what can Williams want of us now ? " 
 was the question of one and all. Williams not 
 long before had come into residence as tutor, fired 
 with sanguine hopes of renovating the college 
 that is, of making young men other than the 
 young men of that stage of society always were 
 and always would be. He had invested his future 
 pupils, as parents invest their unborn children, 
 with all the high qualities he wished them to have 
 as the result of his own high moral and spiritual 
 influences. Poor Williams ! Among the wilder 
 set of Trinity he was as much out of his element 
 as a High Church missionary among the wild 
 tribes of Timbuctoo. Still Hilton, Prichard, Lee, 
 and a few others afforded some little scope for his 
 energies, moral as well as literary. 
 
 But when Isaac Williams, reflected that these 
 wild birds were about to take their final flight and 
 disperse, for better or for worse, to show the 
 result of their education north, south, east and 
 west, he desired to do them what little good he 
 could before they departed college life. 
 
 When they came to breakfast, Belton and
 
 ISAAC WILLIAM'S KINDNESS. 187 
 
 his friends were taken quite by surprise 
 with that cordial greeting and hearty sym- 
 pathy, which at once thawed the icy manner 
 with which, for twelve terms, they had taken 
 off their caps to Williams. "Pray, take off 
 your gowns," he said, " as more comfortable at 
 breakfast. You will not want these gowns long. 
 Time flies. So short a time it seems since you 
 began in my Herodotus lecture. I know you are 
 not reading men, but many men, being more 
 practical, find a useful sphere in life as well ; only 
 we say less of that here, because this place is, I 
 may say, consecrated to the love of learning ; 
 though Mr. Short reminds me truly of the Wyke- 
 hamist motto that the ' manners ' even of the place 
 ' make the man,' and we are all liable to be 
 moulded by our environments. There is a moral 
 and a social just as there is a physical atmosphere, 
 and we cannot live insensible to it." 
 
 During breakfast he continued : " You have 
 several days left, and in that time I think I can 
 do you a little good. You must come to me 
 every evening about seven o'clock, and we will 
 practice examination. I know the cardinal points 
 and how to make your papers far more presen- 
 table to the examiner than may occur to you. 
 In Latin writing especially, most men know quite
 
 188 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Latin enough if they would only use such words 
 as are familiar to them, and not attempt some 
 style beyond them. Above all, answer only what 
 you honestly know. Guesses or 'shots,' as you 
 call them, rarely pass for knowledge and too often 
 betray ignorance, for on paper you cannot explain 
 yourself, whereas with vivd voce an examiner 
 might see a ' method ' in what seems ' madness,' 
 and put you in the way of doing yourself full 
 justice." 
 
 The party came away perfect converts to that 
 Christian goodness before supposed to be the mere 
 fanaticism of one of the college saints. When 
 Charlie heard it he said it was only what he 
 expected. "Williams always was a good fellow, 
 only out of tone and tune with such a set of 
 ungodly scamps as you. You'll say I am preach- 
 ing to you, but you must put -up with sober truth 
 for once." 
 
 Lord Eldon's account of his examination in 1770 
 is amusing : " I was examined in Hebrew and 
 History ' What is the Hebrew for the place of a 
 skull?' I replied, 'Golgotha.' 'Who founded 
 University College ?' I stated (though more than 
 doubtful) ' King Alfred founded it.' " " Very well, 
 sir," said the examiner, "you are competent for 
 your degree."
 
 STRANGE CUSTOMS. 189 
 
 This is quoted in Dr. Knox's essay, in which he 
 says, " The greatest dunce gets his testamur as 
 easily as the greatest genius, though he knows no 
 more than his scout : and even the masters who 
 examine are sometimes equally unacquainted with 
 such mysteries : but Schemes, as they are called, 
 or cram books, containing forty or fifty questions 
 are handed down from age to age, from one to 
 another, to make a show of knowledge for ex- 
 amination." 
 
 I remember seeing a man locked up by Purdue, 
 then the clerk of the schools, for two or three 
 hours to qualify for his Doctor's degree, that the 
 clerk might be able conscientiously to certify that 
 the said candidate had been ready for a learned 
 disputation with any comer, according to some old 
 statute of course no one could come but through 
 the keyhole ! So long does the form survive the 
 substance ! 
 
 Mr. Bedel Cox says, as late as his day, the 
 examination for a degree was a farce, with merely 
 a set of stock questions. There were "Eegent 
 masters " to go through the ceremony for a 
 ceremony it was, and nothing else. Some men 
 were too scrupulous to enact this farce, and joined 
 in a cry for a real examination, though examiners 
 generally did not object to dine with the candidate
 
 190 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 after the fatigues of the morning ; and the following 
 was said to be the grace : 
 
 " Say no more, my young friend, we've complied with the ' Norma 
 
 Loquendi, qucerendi and eke respondendi ; ' 
 
 I'd no reason to sing out ' Non stabat pro forma ' 
 
 So now we will stand on no forma edendi." 
 
 Non stabat pro forma was the old form of plucking. 
 In some college exercises at Cambridge the plucked 
 man heard " Descendas you may go down," 
 made, satirically, sometimes to sound like ' Descend 
 ass!" 
 
 The Class List for Honours, as a stimulus to 
 study, was established, chiefly by Cyril Jackson, in 
 1807. 
 
 Like Hogarth's idle apprentice side by side with 
 the industrious apprentice, we left Hilton working 
 in a most generous spirit, side by side with Belton, 
 Perrott and their friends, men who would not care 
 if every word they were dozing over passed clean 
 out of mind could they only finger that slip of 
 paper which testifies that the bearer had " satisfied " 
 the examiners sometimes too easily satisfied by a 
 great deal. 
 
 Isaac Williams had given this select party a 
 sample of his art of teaching. In Latin writing he 
 impressed that good Latin was better for the 
 schools than near translation with any Latin not
 
 COMING TO THE END. 191 
 
 classical. Belton was surprised to find how by a 
 little ingenuity he could render passages for which 
 at first he wanted words. " Every man," said 
 Williams, " can turn Latin into English ten times 
 more easily than he can turn English into Latin : 
 he has a habit for the one but not for the other ; 
 the art of teaching Latin writings is to practise 
 and form a habit for both." And for a Divinity 
 lecture what was their surprise when Williams 
 began with the Church Catechism and the Prayer 
 book and made his pupils search their memory for 
 scriptural proofs, gradually radiating from that 
 centre ! In all these lectures he evinced such 
 cordiality and sympathy as made them ashamed of 
 their long indifference to a man capable of proving 
 so good a friend. 
 
 And now the schools are opened ; the eventful 
 day has come " big with the fate " of Belton and 
 Perrott and about one hundred and fifty others, 
 for that was about the average at each half-year's 
 examination. 
 
 Of course a breakfast was prepared by sym- 
 pathizing friends. The loan of white bands was 
 volunteered, those most in request being the lucky 
 ones, that is, those worn before without a pluck, 
 for there is generally a little superstition with men 
 on these critical occasions.
 
 192 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 All kinds of rumours as usual were mentioned 
 of the expected strictness of the examiners. 
 Wilson, a new examiner, was reputed a great 
 saint, so it must be a good divinity examination 
 to satisfy him ; while Dixon, whose crude ideas 
 of logic had just been published, would be equally 
 formidable to those who were weak in Aldrich. 
 
 As to the style of our friends, these sporting 
 men had been got up in quite a new character, 
 with nothing like duck-shooting coats or shawl 
 waistcoats (the fancy of the day), but Clifton had 
 suggested a quiet attire, like men of steady 
 characters and V deserving young men." 
 
 To see a hundred men, or more, most of them 
 looking serious if not anxious, to note more pale 
 faces than florid, and to reflect that the occasion 
 marks a crisis in the life of so many the season of 
 preparation past and the wide world in various 
 counties and countries about to open before them 
 this were an interesting study to any man who 
 has lived long enough to understand this life as 
 it is. 
 
 Count Wratislaw's comment was more character- 
 istic of his set : " What a lot of men in the so-called 
 pursuit of learning without a ghost of a chance 
 of overtaking it, a chase in which the further they 
 go the further they are behind, like old Matthews'
 
 THE DAY COME AT LAST. 193 
 
 cockney at the Epping Hunt, who cried out 
 4 Coachee, drive me a-one-and-sixpenny fare, after 
 the stag.' Three-fourths of these fellows would 
 make a clean slate of all the knowledge they are 
 here to make a pretence of, if only sure of that 
 one slip of paper. What a pity it is they don't 
 sell the bits of paper at once, and save all 
 hypocrisy or humbug about the matter." 
 
 Charlie alone seemed easy and confident enough. 
 He knew they must pluck half the men at least 
 if not satisfied with what he could offer. He 
 whispered to me, "Perrott's chance is very 
 doubtful. Belton and Phipps may shave the 
 right side of the post if luck favours them, not 
 otherwise, for Clifton's men are all for appear- 
 ance. Why, what can Clifton do at all genuine 
 in three months' reading after three years' idle- 
 ness ? with men who know less than when they 
 were fresh from school. All these men have been 
 in the proctor's books, and they are all afraid of 
 the effect of bad characters, though Isaac 
 Williams told me that though a good word 
 may be heard, but that rarely, for a very 
 deserving man, as to others the examiners con- 
 fined their attention to the work before them." 
 
 I had provided luncheon for this party at one 
 o'clock. The Count was with me awaiting the 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 return of our friends, " and to hear," as said the 
 Count, " whether they had floored the logic or the 
 logic had floored them." 
 
 In they came almost breathless and in a great 
 state of excitement mixed with indignation. 
 Belton first spoke, " Perrott has got his ticket 
 and no mistake Scandalous ! Whoever heard 
 of a man plucked at the very first start ! The 
 case is too plain ; they are down upon us for 
 our scrapes the proctors choose the examiners 
 and no doubt they have a list of us and the story 
 of that Jericho affair too. I'll not wait to be 
 bullied I'll cut it at once," and so saying he tore 
 off his bands and threw them under the grate. 
 
 Perrott now came in tears in his eyes choked 
 and could hardly speak ; but the Count snatched 
 the note from his hand and read that the senior 
 examiner was sorry to tell Mr. Perrott that his 
 logic paper was so deficient that it were useless 
 for him to continue the examination. . 
 
 Belton repeated with no little violence of 
 language, " They are down on the Trinity set ; 
 they know our set as well as they know ' the swell 
 mob of Merton ' they are down on us for our 
 characters, I say, or they would have given Perrott 
 another chance." 
 
 " Come," said the Count, " be reasonable,
 
 A SAD MISHAP. 195 
 
 Belton ; don't shy the post : you may be well in 
 the running still ; besides Perrott didn't train with 
 Clifton's lot ; and we all knew he was the weakest 
 horse in the field Here," he said, picking up the 
 bands from the fender, " put on your colours ; you 
 can but lose after all." 
 
 " True, true," said Phipps ; " perhaps my morals 
 are as shaky as any, and as black in the proctor's 
 books too, but I'll see the end of it." Meanwhile 
 the Count had poured out nearly a tumbler full 
 of sherry and was administering it to Perrott as a 
 general panacea for all the " ills that flesh is heir 
 to," the " mind diseased " included, with, " Here, 
 Perrott, my good fellow, only get this inside of 
 you and you'll be better. Don't be down in the 
 mouth ; why, you are a free man now ; quite a 
 gentleman at large, now. Yes, and Mark Murrell's 
 hounds meet at the quarries to-morrow and you 
 shall ride my mare till her tail drops off." 
 
 Meanwhile Charlie took Belton aside and said, 
 " I would bet five pounds that the examiner took 
 an early glance at Perrott's logic papers, because 
 he suspected copying. See that deep gash on 
 that picture frame ; I saw Perrott cut some leaves 
 out of Aldrich's Logic against that frame in a 
 nervous hurry, and pocket them just as he was 
 starting for the schools. This never answers ; it 
 
 13*
 
 196 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 is easy to see if a man is copying ; he is fumbling 
 at something and looks suspicious." 
 
 This explanation of Perrott's mishap satisfied 
 Belton and he resolved to try on. 
 
 " It is very odd," said Short, one day to me, 
 " how men do contrive to get some of their work 
 done for them in the schools. One man I knew 
 could not write Latin fit to pass, and I was told 
 he meant to have it done by a friend ; so I 
 cautioned the examiners, but my informant told 
 me the Latin was done for him after all." 
 
 " A cat in a corner must fight," and man in his 
 utmost need becomes very ingenious and not the 
 more conscientious either, as the following case 
 will show : 
 
 At three o'clock the schools re-opened. The 
 subject for that afternoon was a translation from 
 Latin into English ; and as I was reading quietly 
 in my room, glad to escape from all this excite- 
 ment, in rushed Phipps, breathless with running 
 and just gasped out : 
 
 " Nullus argento color est avaris. Write out a 
 translation of that ode as fast as you can." 
 
 As soon as he had breath enough he related, as 
 I wrote, that on entering the schools, Mr. 
 Moberley, the late Bishop of Winchester, one of 
 the examiners, was standing with his back to the
 
 TRICKS ON EXAMINERS. 197 
 
 door and only about three yards in, and distribut- 
 ing the Horace papers for that afternoon's work. 
 Phipps peeped over his shoulder, read the first 
 line and backed out without being seen by Mr. 
 Moberley and caring little for the amazement of 
 the other candidates looking on. Whether Phipps 
 could have passed in Horace without this 
 assistance I do not know, but at the same 
 examination Bob Eobinson Crazy Bob we used 
 to call him, from his reckless conduct and 
 scattered wits could not write a single pro- 
 position of those set from Euclid, yet passed 
 from copying two from a selection of the most 
 difficult he had in his pocket. I cannot but 
 reflect that if these three cases of imposing on 
 the examiners occurred in my experience alone, 
 how many other instances of similar bad tricks 
 may there not have been ! My friend Canon H. 
 told me of a Cambridge man, a first-rate classic, 
 whose mathematical papers excited the suspicion 
 and incredulity of the examiners, being so much 
 beyond the man's college reputation so he was 
 watched and found copying from one of the best 
 men of his day while sitting opposite him. In 
 one instance he had arrived at a right answer with 
 some figures wrongly copied in the premises ! 
 Charlie said these tricks did not come up to
 
 198 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 his sense of honesty, especially because the can- 
 didates were treated as gentlemen without any 
 uncomplimentary espionage : but Wratislaw said 
 that if imposing on examiners was dishonesty they 
 were all dishonest alike, and Clifton, who dealt in 
 these make-believe scraps of knowledge, was not 
 better than the man who sold wooden nutmegs or 
 painted canaries or "flowers without roots," 
 said Charlie, " doomed to wither as soon as 
 planted for this is the true illustration of the 
 said imposition." " If it is not ' obtaining money 
 under false pretences,' it is obtaining money's 
 worth, degrees," said Hilton, when he heard of 
 this question of morals. 
 
 Nothing worth mentioning occurred on the 
 third day's examination, but then came the day 
 for vivd voce, which was in divinity alone. Charlie 
 and Phipps, the former from curiosity, but the 
 latter in hopes of anticipating the same questions, 
 watched the examination continually till it came 
 to their turn to present themselves, and numerous 
 were the questions and answers which they 
 brought away for their own benefit as well as 
 Belton's. An experienced examiner had told 
 Charlie that to vary an examination was not easy 
 and that most examiners naturally fell back into 
 their own particular grooves.
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 GOING "UP FOE A FIEST CLASS, WITH A VEKY IN- 
 TEEESTING EPISODE. 
 
 AT length the day arrived. Belton had notice 
 from Purdue, many years clerk of the schools, 
 to appear next day with five others : Five of the 
 six were usually seated with papers of questions 
 while one was examined. 
 
 " Belton will be up at twelve," said the Count, 
 as he looked into my room, with his gown on his 
 arm, " of course you will come and hear him. 
 Not that I trouble the place very often the very 
 look of it makes me melancholy, and as to old 
 Purdue I would as soon meet my undertaker." 
 
 When I entered, one promising man, Baxter, 
 who might have gone in for a class, had just 
 finished with eliciting some complimentary remark 
 from the examiners. "This will make it worse 
 for Belton," said the Count, " to come after such a 
 swell examination as that."
 
 200 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 And now Belton was called from the side desk 
 where he had been employed. He bit his lips and 
 walked resolutely up with a glance at his friends, 
 as much as to say, " Here goes at last, neck or 
 nothing." The Greek Testament was put into his 
 hand, and he was told to read. It was no little 
 satisfaction to identify a passage in which he felt 
 safe, and as he read as slowly as he could to make 
 the little he knew go a long way, the Count said 
 to Phipps, " Well done, Belton, there's a good 
 ten minutes run without a check." After that 
 followed a question or two on the Articles, one or 
 two on types or phophecies " all out of Vincent's 
 Cram book, so far," whispered the Count, and 
 then after a question as to Elijah and Elisha and 
 the building of the Temple, " How would you 
 define a sacrament ? " said the examiner. " A 
 poser and no mistake this is " was the next com- 
 ment from the Count, but when Belton, inwardly 
 blessing Mr. Williams for his hints about the 
 Catechism, gave the right answer, the Count at 
 once exploded : 
 
 "Well, I never should have thought of such 
 a charity boy's answer as that." This last reply 
 seemed to give some satisfaction and ended the 
 examination, which as far as divinity was con- 
 cerned, was evidently in Belton's favour. As he
 
 AN ANXIOUS MOMENT. 201 
 
 came out all his friends ran out to congratulate 
 him. " Fool that I was," said the Count,^" to be 
 afraid of such an examination as that. Why, I 
 could have answered most of the questions 
 myself." True, true, but the first you missed 
 would have been followed up by others probing 
 you in your weakest points. This is a common 
 mistake, my friend ; it always seems easier to the 
 lookers-on. 
 
 Still there were some anxious hours to be passed 
 by Belton. He had heard from Isaac Williams 
 that after the divinity examination all the papers 
 of the candidate were surveyed together, and 
 the question had to be decided, whether in the 
 balance the candidate had done quantum suff. 
 or not. 
 
 At five o'clock the examiners came out and 
 brushed hastily past half a dozen men anxiously 
 waiting. Immediately after Purdue appeared, 
 holding the testamurs high over his head for fear 
 they should all be snatched away at once. The 
 Count, who volunteered to stand for a painful 
 quarter of an hour with the five friends, waiting for 
 the other candidates, was nervously swinging his 
 gown strings and pacing about the door of the 
 schools. At once all the six friends rushed 
 forward. " Don't be in a hurry, gentlemen," said
 
 202 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Purdue, standing high on the step to be above 
 them. ^" Here are five out of six ; all safely 
 through but Mr. Wilkins of Oriel." "Hurrah 
 for Belton ! " cried the Count, and soon with 
 similar exultation from the other friends in 
 waiting, you might have seen them running at 
 
 O y / O < ' 
 
 their best speed their gowns flying out like 
 black wings behind them north, south, east and 
 west, though poor Wilkins' friend stood sorrow- 
 fully fixed to the spot, till he had asked one 
 more question of Purdue, and then he walked 
 painfully away with heavy step and heavier heart, 
 to perform what many a man has felt to be the 
 most trying duty of college friendship, to return 
 to a fellow collegian empty-handed from the door 
 of the school, to find him trembling with excite- 
 ment and listening to every footstep, as it crushes 
 along the gravel or sounds upon the stairs, and to 
 have to break to him the sad news that there is 
 no testamur for him ; that he must cheer up 
 better -luck another time and try to think of 
 something else and drown his care with jolly 
 companions and a glass of wine. Very hard to 
 do ! " Miserable comforters are you all " in such 
 a mood ! 
 
 "Plucked, ah, plucked! How stinging is the 
 word, all my labour for nothing! The same
 
 PLUCKED! HOW HORRID! 203 
 
 drudgery and self-denial to be followed by the 
 same sickening anxiety and torture of suspense 
 over again ; and all ending in another pluck, 
 too, I should not wonder. I feel as if I never 
 could bring myself to try again. Plucked am I ? 
 and I must write it home yes, home ! There's 
 no way to hide it, and in a week every one that 
 knows me here or at home must hear it all." 
 
 The sad soliloquy of many a man. 
 
 Oh, what a misery it is to be plucked ! I 
 remember one undergraduate who was driven 
 mad by it and committed suicide. Some will 
 speak lightly of a pluck at college ; for, of 
 course the idle and shameless will everywhere 
 find a few to keep them in countenance. But I 
 never knew a man so bold as to deny that a 
 pluck was a very sore subject at home. First 
 of all, the very name of being plucked sounds 
 in almost every ear as the just punishment of a 
 brainless idle dunce. The term itself is con- 
 temptible ; it is associated with the most stupid, 
 spiritless animals of creation. When we hear 
 of a man being plucked, we think he is neces- 
 sarily a goose. This is the general association 
 of ideas not always the just conclusion perhaps, 
 for we know that some few clever men and good 
 scholars have been plucked from too little atten-
 
 204 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 tion to some one subject ; still public opinion is 
 never modified by solitary exceptions. As long 
 back as my memory will carry me, down to the 
 present day, there has been scarcely a mono- 
 syllable in our language which seems to convey 
 so stinging a reproach or to let a man down 
 in the general estimation half as much as this 
 one word "pluck." It is an imputation which 
 admits of no reply, no defence, and no remedy. 
 It cannot be concealed, and in some cases is 
 never forgotten. "A worthy kind of man that, 
 I believe," was remarked to me once of a clergy- 
 man nearly fifty years of age, " but not much 
 brains though ; he was plucked at college." Ah 1 
 the University may know by the lists who go 
 up, and have nearly an equal opportunity of dis- 
 covering who are plucked. Country friends and 
 relatives must know it also ; for even supposing 
 that a man refrains from mentioning that his 
 examination is coming on, some of his father's 
 neighbours have sons at college who circulate 
 the news. Besides, who can control the tongue 
 of his fond mamma in her morning calls ? How 
 natural for her to remark how she longs to hear 
 her dear boy is safe through his examination ; and 
 thus when the sorry news comes all ears are open 
 to receive it.
 
 PLUCK" "WHENCE DERIVED. 205 
 
 As regards the university regulations, there is 
 no limit to the number of attempts you may make 
 or to the plucks you may sustain, but few colleges 
 will allow more than two. At Christchurch I 
 have known a single pluck to involve a hint to 
 leave. 
 
 The term plucked, or now " ploughed," some say 
 is derived from the habit of plucking the proctor's 
 gown to whisper a non placet to stop the degree, 
 chiefly on the part of a creditor for debt, 
 though some say it originated from some such 
 incident as this : The clerk of the schools was 
 one day sweeping up torn papers and worn out 
 pens and quills, and said to a passing friend, 
 " See what sport to-day see the feathers of the 
 geese we have plucked." 
 
 One of the logical definitions of a man, giving 
 his genus and differentia, is Bipes implumis, very 
 like " a plucked man." 
 
 But to resume our history : Briggs and Phipps 
 escaped, as said the Count, by the skin of their 
 teeth. Wine parties followed and healths were 
 drunk, and speeches to their honour, as if they 
 were the heroes of the hour ; and to pass seemed 
 all the easier from their success. This reflection 
 made the Count more down in the mouth than 
 ever, thinking, "Why shouldn't I have done as
 
 206 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 well as the others who trained with Clifton's lot." 
 At last he said such luck was too good to last 
 and as some had still to read for Ordination he 
 said, rather characteristically, " They are all 
 going down hill at a swinging pace at present, 
 but the Bishop will put the skid on some of 
 them." 
 
 But much as I was interested in these idle 
 fellows who had just escaped the penalty of three 
 years thrown away, all the time that good fellow 
 Hilton was my chief interest and anxiety, for fear 
 bad luck, as in the case of Cardinal Newman and 
 others, should place him lower than the first class. 
 It is wonderful how increasing knowledge increases 
 our consciousness of our own ignorance our 
 standard of perfection rises, " Alps o'er Alps 
 arise," and a wider field still opens to our view : 
 so, for the highest honours at Oxford I never 
 knew any man who went in confident. Our 
 friends are often sanguine and our private ' coach ' 
 too, but the latter rarely tries his pupil in all his 
 subjects, and I knew one, considered to have every 
 prospect of success, who returned a chorus of 
 Sophocles, almost the only part of Sophocles he 
 did not know, wholly unattempted : this infallibly 
 would lower him from the first class to the 
 second.
 
 READS FOR A FIRST CLASS. 207 
 
 And now the pass men had cleared away, and 
 the schools reopened for the classes, and we heard 
 all the usual prognostication that Balliol would 
 have, say, two firsts, Christchurch three, and 
 other colleges as many in the hopes of their 
 partisans as would soon double the highest 
 number on record. The number used to be 
 about six : in the Midsummer of the year 1843, 
 strange to say, there were none, and about the 
 same time no Latin verse was good enough for 
 the usual prize. The largest number of firsts I 
 ever remember was in 1834, when Lord Sher- 
 brooke, the late Bishop Jackson and Mr. Allies 
 formed part of a class of twelve. 
 
 There were four days of paper work, eight 
 papers in all, mornings and afternoons. And I 
 was pleased to see from Hilton's looks and spirits 
 that he had every reason to be sanguine. Then 
 followed six more days for desperate reading, 
 before the day for the vivd voce of Hilton of 
 Trinity Hilton Edwardus e Coll : Trin : as it stood 
 in the list of candidates. 
 
 There was no little college pride in Hilton's pros- 
 pects in the class list. Benham of Balliol at the same 
 time was at the height of his fame, and more than 
 once it had been observed that though Brahma from 
 earlier advantages had stood before Hilton for the
 
 208 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Ireland scholarship, they would find that Hilton 
 had made up his lee-way and would show the 
 better of the two for his degree. Therefore, Nor- 
 man and Wilton felt disappointed, as I was, when 
 I heard that Hilton had not been able to afford " a 
 coach " during the long vacation, though his rival 
 could afford one for these four precious months, 
 which, as every Oxford man remembers, so often 
 witness the final struggle for a first. 
 
 For this reason, the nearer the day drew to 
 Hilton's examination the greater was the excitement 
 in the college. Some sanguine non-reading men 
 protested that " pluck must win the pace was in 
 him ; Hilton was the man to go in and win." 
 
 But all good scholars knew that a quantum of 
 book-work must be done, and that no degree of 
 talent or of fire could make up for certain text- 
 books unread, or for a failure in certain technicali- 
 ties which formed the conventional test of exact 
 knowledge and hard study. The reading men 
 therefore always had their misgivings till they read 
 the result on the doors of the Schools. 
 
 " It will take me seven days' hard work," said 
 Hilton, " for a final reading of the seven plays of 
 Sophocles, without which by bad luck I shall be 
 floored." 
 
 " We will do it together, in two hours each
 
 READING FOR A FIRST CLASS. 209 
 
 play," said Norman. " I have marked out for my 
 own use all the passages a man would not take at 
 sight. This will save time and leave you fresh for 
 something else." 
 
 Accordingly Norman led Hilton as he said over 
 all the most dangerous ground, and tried him in 
 all the little niceties of scholarship before breakfast 
 seven days together. 
 
 There are those who never will forget the day of 
 this particular examination in the schools. It 
 commenced late in the day, an hour and a half 
 devoted to divinity and the sciences most about 
 the latter. Now the sciences were not Hilton's 
 forte. Though not supposed to be really deficient 
 in science, every other subject was known to be 
 more to his mind. In these days a certain party 
 of private coaches more especially, Hayward Cox, 
 threw a mystery over Aristotle and secured a 
 monopoly in private coaching, by encouraging a 
 belief that no candidate was safe unless initiated by 
 one of this clique into the " crochets of the schools " 
 crotchets not to be learnt by any plain under- 
 standing from the books alone so, the idea that 
 Hilton with no such preparation was entered for 
 the University stakes was deemed as daring a dis- 
 regard of the odds as when Lane of Queen's, des- 
 pising the training or the style of Stephen Davis, 
 VOL. i. 14
 
 210 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 trained his own boat for the head of the river, or 
 when the home-trained Wild Dayrell, with the 
 Littlecot groom for a jockey, was entered for the 
 Derby. 
 
 And now the sciences are done, and well done 
 the Aristotle examination over leaving the strong 
 points for next morning and Isaac Williams who 
 had sat behind the examiners all the time, a very 
 picture of sympathy and nervousness, said there 
 had not been a better science examination that 
 term. Great therefore was the triumph of those 
 sceptical individuals who had ventured to maintain 
 that Cox and Co. were now at a discount. Hurrah 
 for the reign of common sense, or as Charlie said, 
 " The force of humbug could no further go." Great 
 also was the confidence with which all Hilton's 
 friends looked forward to the morrow. 
 
 Hilton's turn for vivd voce did not come till two 
 . o'clock on the first day ; so many friends were not 
 prepared for this day's examination, but the way 
 in which he disposed of his sciences that day was 
 news which soon spread and filled the schools the 
 next morning. I went to Short to excuse my 
 lecture that I might hear Hilton examined. " He 
 said " this is the fourth application. I think I had 
 better send you round to say ' No lecture this 
 morning,' especially as I have reason to believe
 
 HILTON IN THE SCHOOLS. 211 
 
 that Hilton is in a fair way to do credit to the 
 college." 
 
 The schools were early crowded with Hilton's 
 friends and others interested in the honour of 
 Trinity. 
 
 The examination, though prolonged for three 
 hours, passed off in every point as well as could be 
 desired ; but towards the end there was a little 
 consultation and whispering among the examiners, 
 one of whom was about to hand Hilton one more 
 passage to translate when the senior examiner 
 seemed to be saying, " Enough." This gave Hilton 
 time to look around to the left and to exchange 
 glances with his friends. It was fortunate for 
 Hilton's equanimity that he did not look in that 
 direction before ; for that hasty glance was not too 
 hasty to reveal a certain bonnet, however quickly 
 shrinking back by the door ; and in a moment 
 Hilton was overpowered by the sense that his fond 
 sister had found a friend to bring her over that day 
 from her home near Abingdon to witness this 
 critical examination in which her hopes and those 
 of all the family so long had centred. 
 
 Hilton was a strong-minded man with much self- 
 command ; still the utmost he could do was to take 
 the book presented to him with lips convulsively 
 pressed together in stolid silence and to take time 
 
 14*
 
 212 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 to choke down his emotion, no discredit to the 
 bravest heart. It was plain to the examiner that 
 some sudden feeling had overcome him ; and the 
 senior examiner once more interfered and briefly 
 said, in the name of all the examiners, that on 
 every part they thanked him for a very good ex- 
 amination. 
 
 I, need not describe the well-known sounds and 
 trampling over the benches which tell the examiners 
 that the candidate is in a moment to be surrounded 
 by " troops of friends ;" still less need we intrude 
 upon those solemn confidences and words of endear- 
 ment which were rapturously exchanged when 
 Hilton hafl escaped to the further corner of the 
 quadrangle, where the same neat bonnet and the 
 aged Eector of Grrimley were waiting to receive him. 
 Life has happy moments, and these are of them. 
 This indeed was a scene hard to forget, and even 
 after a lapse of fifty and more years I am sure that 
 one at least of my surviving friends will be reminded 
 of the soft feelings which that day stole over him 
 when he reads this touching incident.
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 TAKING A DEGEEE. SOME NICE BOYS AND WHAT 
 BECAME OF THEM. 
 
 ONE more remarkable occurrence I must chronicle 
 
 of this term's examination: Lord C , of 
 
 Jesus College, who eventually took a second class, 
 strangely and absurdly broke down in his divinity 
 on the first occasion. He was asked as to a King 
 of Israel. He replied rightly " Saul." " Quite 
 right sir." " Afterwards called Paul." L " Stay, 
 'we are sp eaking of the Old Testament and you say 
 ' Saul, afterwards called Paul.' Am I to under- 
 stand that this Saul, King of Israel, was the same 
 person that was afterwards called Paul ? " " Yes, 
 certainly." 
 
 *" Then (shutting the book) it is quite needless 
 to continue this examination." 
 
 Lord C was followed out of the school 
 
 by his friends and Welbore, of Trinity, among 
 others, who said : " How could you be such a
 
 214 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 fool ? ' Saul ' was all right ; why did you not 
 leave off a winner ? You must have seen there 
 was something wrong." 
 
 "Never mind," he said, "if the examiner's 
 ideas and mine differed as widely as all that, there 
 was no use in humbugging any more about the 
 matter." 
 
 And what became of Hilton ? Fifty years, you 
 say, have passed. What was his fate and fortune 
 after so auspicious a beginning ? 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge have proved the 
 stepping stones by which many a man has passed 
 from village obscurity and narrow means to the 
 highest rank in Church and State. A clever 
 youth, provided he has that inflexible per- 
 severance which the facilities of ability are too 
 apt to discourage, is no sooner at college than he 
 has his foot on the ladder, with a chance to 
 rise. 
 
 I heard nothing of Hilton but on an occasional 
 exchange of newspapers, which each believed to 
 be entertaining to the other, for thirty years, 
 when he wrote to ask my interest at Madras for 
 his son, just appointed to the Civil Service. Hilton 
 was then Dean of Blanktown, to which eminence 
 he concisely said he had risen first by Oxford
 
 CHARLIE DOWN IN THE WORLD. 215 
 
 coaching, secondly by a Fellowship with college 
 tutoring, and his turn at the offices of Dean and 
 Bursar of his College ; then university proctor, 
 and lastly head-master of Blank School, where his 
 eminence as a preacher, and the wide interest that 
 such a mastership in time commands, enlisted so 
 much sympathy for a long and laborious life that 
 on the principle of solve senescentem he was 
 shunted into a Deanery. 
 
 Here I have enumerated the steps in the career 
 of many a rising University man, who begins with 
 nothing, and ends in an Obituary with, "Dr. 
 Blank died, aged 75 ; Will sworn under thirty 
 thousand pounds." 
 
 Less studious men, beginning too fast, burn out 
 the candle of life in less than seventy years. Of 
 Briggs, Charlie, Belton, and Perrott, Perrott alone 
 survives to laugh with me over what once choked 
 his utterance his pluck, and frolics various. 
 
 Charlie, as he drew more and more deeply on 
 his patrimony, I used to meet in the reading-room 
 of the British Museum, one of the many poor 
 scholars who go there morning after morning, 
 distracted with the literary wealth at their 
 command, while they hope to freshen up some 
 worn-out subject and turn a penny in Paternoster 
 Eow. These are the men who add to the
 
 216 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 prejudice against publishers, simply because they 
 will not buy what they know from long experi- 
 ence that the public will not read. There is a 
 fashion in books as in dishes and dresses. The 
 poem that made Byron famous in a week, Murray 
 said, not long since, would, from an unknown 
 author, never find at the present day a re- 
 munerative sale. Poor Charlie ! Talent without 
 ballast of a certain kind will keep no man afloat. 
 He would flit over the flowers and cull the sweets 
 of literature, but never could master any single 
 subject. As to writing for the Press, with that 
 .untiring engine ever crushing behind you, and 
 like time and tide waiting for no man, Charlie 
 was a heart-ache for any editor who was per- 
 suaded to depend upon him. It would be painful 
 .to dwell too minutely on Charlie's downward 
 course. He had in his father's lifetime " received 
 his good things," and by the time all his college 
 bills were paid a sad surprise to the father his 
 share, .and more than his share, of the family 
 estate was gone, and when the father and mother 
 slept that -long sleep which alone gives rest from 
 <such anxieties as wild boys like Charlie must ever 
 cause, then the sisters took their shares took it 
 sto keep it, too^, for to those settled in life the 
 husbands .and the little ones soon suggest a reply
 
 AN AMATEUR AUCTIONEER. 217 
 
 which brings the prodigal to a sense that he must 
 depend on himself alone. In the extremity of his 
 distress Charlie, was saved by a legacy from an 
 aunt, but this was well-nigh exhausted before 
 I read of his death, aged sixty-five, at the house of 
 a widowed sister. 
 
 When I read this I thought of Charlie at the 
 breakfast party in Belton's rooms the morning he 
 and his friends took their degrees. Charlie stood on 
 a chair and acted auctioneer in a humorous way 
 to dispose of Belton's pictures, stable effects, and 
 other sundries : " Here, my friends, I stand to sell 
 some of the goods and chattels of a highly 
 respectable gentleman, too genteel to be otherwise 
 than short of money; goods going without 
 reserve, ready money and no tic the conditions of 
 the sale." 
 
 The Count was particularly invited to buy all 
 the cram books and English translations, though 
 he said the very sight of them took away his 
 appetite ; he said that the stag's horns and Briggs' 
 " pink " (hunting coat), quite new a piece of 
 extravagance, he 'said, Briggs dare not sport 
 before the governor would be more in his line. 
 Belton's hack, which had had a little accident in 
 the off-knee, elicited from the Count a bid of a 
 pound a leg a bid which, mounting : up to five
 
 218 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 pound a leg, he allowed to be knocked down to 
 him, stipulating for the saddle and bridle into the 
 bargain. A whole heap of unsold books eventu- 
 ally formed a decent pile in Belton's room from 
 which, he said, any gentleman might pick and 
 choose as he pleased, for since he had finished his 
 education he only wanted to lose sight of them for 
 ever. Some of these books are in my study to the 
 present hour. 
 
 And now, after going in a body to the rooms of 
 Mr. Copeland, then Dean, to eat their own bread 
 and butter, and to read through the Thirty-nine 
 Articles in his presence, pro formd, they all went 
 to the Convocation House to be dubbed B.A. No 
 little laughter was caused when, being told to 
 write their names in Latin, one Arthur Taylor 
 wrote himself down Arcturus (astronomically) 
 instead of Arturus Taylor a fine exemplification 
 of the benefit he had derived from the three years' 
 study at Oxford when he did not know the con- 
 ventional Latin for his own name. 
 
 But, in a mood as all were for fun and jollity, 
 few things could have been more laughable than 
 the following scene with Briggs : 
 
 Briggs had never heard of extra fees for Grand 
 Compounder, nor consequently of the series of 
 formal questions usually asked asked to deter-
 
 FEES FOR A DEGREE VARIOUS. 219 
 
 mine what fees, depending on income, should be 
 exacted. 
 
 Briggs, on being questioned, deemed the clerk 
 monstrously impertinent, and with these feelings 
 the usual questions were put and answered as 
 follows : 
 
 The Clerk : Have you 300 a year in land ? 
 
 Briggs (with astonishment) : No ! 
 
 The Clerk : Have you 300 in the funds ? 
 
 Briggs (impatiently) : No. 
 
 The Clerk : Have you 300 house property ? 
 
 Briggs (louder and more indignant still) : No. 
 
 The Clerk : Have you 300 in any securities ? 
 
 Briggs : No not not one d n. 
 
 Men used to pay for their degrees more or less 
 in proportion to their estates, if they had any. 
 Those who possessed a certain income were 
 obliged to graduate as " Grand Compounders," a 
 custom only extinct in 1857. Men who had 300 
 a year paid extra fees 30 instead of 7 as B.A., 
 and 40 instead of 14 as M.A. were called 
 Grand Compounders, and wore a red gown on 
 being admitted to the degree. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, anything as absurd as the 
 following ceremony, and all to be enacted on the day 
 preceding the degree of a Grand Compounder :
 
 220 'OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 The candidate, with the Dean of his College, waited 
 on the Vice- Chancellor and the Proctors to ask 
 <e an extra grace," and to solicit their attendance. 
 On the morrow, accordingly, whatever the distance 
 or the weather, the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors 
 were expected to head a procession, consisting of 
 the Grand Compounder with his " presentator " at 
 his side, and the members of his college, cheered 
 all the way to the Convocation House by the rabble 
 and the bells of St. Mary's quite a show spectacle 
 for lionisers. 
 
 This absurd ceremony grew gradually out of 
 favour, and since the year 1817 it had not been 
 customary for Grand Compounders to claim it. 
 But in 1853 it was claimed again : one Mr. Baxen- 
 dale, of Balliol, desirous of having as much as he 
 could for these high fees, in demanding the degree 
 demanded the full procession too, saying " as he 
 paid the piper he was determined to have the 
 dance." So this absurdity and folly was once more 
 repeated. As the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Cotton, 
 passed by from Worcester College with his pro- 
 cession, the candidate and the Balliol men joined 
 in, to the amazement of the lookers-on. This was 
 too absurd for the times, and the custom was 
 formally abrogated by statute in the following 
 year.
 
 BRIOOS UNFIT FOR BUSINESS. 221 
 
 The ceremony of taking the B.A. degree being 
 over, our friends soon appeared, flaunting their 
 bachelors' gowns, and if I remember rightly, they 
 set anything but an example of maturer years 
 and sobriety for the few days they remained at 
 college. 
 
 As Briggs was a Clifton man, and known to me 
 from boyhood, I never quite lost sight of him. 
 His father said to me, " Where is the good of 
 Tom's B.A. He will not go into the Church, and 
 if : he did, it is too late in the day for sporting 
 parsons. At the Bar a man must have far more 
 wits than Tom to pay for his wig : and as to that 
 chance in my brother's (the merchant's) office, 
 when Tom. said he was half disposed to go, then 
 my brother replied that he was no longer half 
 disposed to have him. "Business," he said, "is 
 imperious ; no half measures will do. It will be 
 a very awkward thing to have to send Tom adrift 
 when I see him smoking his cigar at all times, 
 with a flower in his button-hole., or absent and 
 swinging his cane in Eotten Row. I think that 
 my nephew, John Willis, is far more likely to do 
 justice to so good a place." 
 
 Mr. Briggs, senior, like other fond and indulgent 
 fathers, went on still grumbling and still humour- 
 ing Tom, being not a little proud of Tom's re-
 
 222 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 putation as a fine fellow at the covers or across 
 country ; so Tom lived on in idleness till too late 
 for any profession. But fathers, even those most 
 indulgent, do not live for ever. They even die all 
 the poorer for that easy good nature which cannot 
 say No. And when Mr. Briggs, senior, was dead 
 and buried, Tom became alive alive for the first 
 time to the fact that not only was the paternal 
 income rather reduced, but that when divided by 
 seven, the number of the family, and Tom's 
 education and various expenses as directed by the 
 will had been deducted, his income was about 
 enough to pay, on his usual scale, for cigars and 
 turnpikes. But no more turnpikes for Tom 
 Briggs, for in more senses than one this wondrous 
 horseman had come to the ground. 
 
 What could Tom do ? What was he fit for ? 
 There was held a small committee of ways and 
 means, but with more irony than sympathy. To 
 charter a hansom cab was not then discovered as a 
 common resource for broken-down gentlemen ; 
 still, Tom could write sporting articles, and in 
 hunting and racing he was a first-rate authority. 
 He had also, like the unjust steward, been rather 
 open-handed and free in wasting the goods of his 
 father, and so far was popular, having made "friends 
 of the mammon of unrighteousness," and literally
 
 TOM BRIGGS FINDS A PLAGE. 223 
 
 many were ready "to receive him into their houses." 
 Tom had exactly that genial and pleasant nature 
 which to the worn-out and blase possessors of 
 wealth is as balm to their spirits and oil to their 
 bones, and, as there is nothing for nothing in this 
 world, this was the light and airy quid for their 
 solid quo. Tom was a capital fellow in a country 
 house, so easy-going and obliging that Lady 
 Wideawake once said you could give him a shake- 
 down in a garret and push him about as if he went 
 on patent castors. Then Tom would get up 
 charades, bud roses with her ladyship, make her 
 boy a rabbit-hutch, and take the least attractive old 
 maid down to dinner. Tom had also acted courier 
 for a party up the Ehine, and done a little 
 gratuitous bear-leading for his mere expenses, and 
 at all times he made a point of laughing at the worst 
 jokes and lending an ear to his host's dullest 
 stories. So Tom was just the man to be invited 
 for the best shooting and fishing, and his fame 
 in the hunting-field extended his invitations to 
 Market Harborough and the Leicestershire meets. 
 Now it happened fortunately that Tom, having 
 from time to time assisted the usual contributor 
 to some sporting papers with useful information, 
 was asked to take the place during the illness of 
 his friend. This led to a permanent appointment,
 
 224 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 because the editors saw that Tom, as a gentleman 
 born, with the entree of country houses, could 
 supply information not available to reporters 
 generally. In this Tom succeeded ; the masters 
 of hounds and the proprietors of race-horses soon 
 found from Tom Briggs the nattering articles and 
 the publicity which their interests required ; while 
 the editors rejoiced in a kind of information and 
 interest which their readers had never enjoyed 
 before. 
 
 Tom was a manly, good-looking fellow, and 
 a favourite with the ladies, and once he had 
 a fair chance of a lady of title with a handsome 
 fortune ; but unfortunately there was not one 
 only, there happened to be " two ladies in wait- 
 ing," who having outstood, matrimonially, both 
 their market and their charms, were ready to 
 compound with no one more eligible than Tom 
 Briggs. Letters as well as glances had passed 
 with both, when unluckily the two ladies each so 
 far in utter innocence of the other's little game 
 made a confidante of the other ; and fancy their 
 blank faces when, in comparing their love-letters, 
 both sets bore alike the protestations and the 
 signature of " Yours most devotedly, Thomas 
 Briggs." You would have supposed that this 
 would have excluded Tom from Havenham Hall
 
 TOM BRIGGS' GREAT MISTAKE. 225 
 
 for ever after, but not so. That old marchioness, 
 at whose house this play of " Love's Labour Lost " 
 had been so far enacted, only invited Tom to make 
 fun and enliven her visitors, and when this story 
 was whispered about, of course it was the greatest 
 fun of all. " There is always something in the 
 misfortunes of our dearest friends for which we 
 are not altogether sorry," said Rochefoucauld. 
 This is true indeed of married ladies as regards 
 those who fail in nuptial honours : for few 
 women were ever known to grieve because some 
 rival was plucked for her matrimonial degree ; so 
 Tom was merely told, with a sly look, by his 
 hostess, " she was afraid he was a sad, wild dog, 
 only he must not do it again." 
 
 Still Tom had lost a chance. When Gay the 
 poet had made money in the South Sea Bubble, 
 he was advised to realize and " to make sure of 
 at least a leg of mutton and a clean shirt once a 
 week to the end of his days." Tom Briggs, like 
 Gay, lived to regret the chance of those simple 
 essentials so carelessly thrown away. For years 
 I read Tom's articles under the name of Spero in 
 the sporting papers, and met Tom with telescope 
 at his back, duly accoutred and dressed in the 
 newest toggery the very picture of a man who 
 spent all he earned at Ascot and Goodwood. 
 VOL. i. 15
 
 226 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 But these were fine weather races. " Business " 
 even in racing is " imperious," and Tom had also 
 to encounter the trying days of vernal and 
 autumnal courses, and had no time to lie by or 
 to spare himself ; so rough work began to tell ; 
 first he appeared with a walking stick, and then 
 had something more like a crutch for his rheu- 
 matics, and about ten years since his place knew 
 him no more, and another reporter of a far less 
 stylish character reigned in Tom's stead. 
 
 What could Tom do ? Where were his rich 
 friends now ? By sixty-five a man has drifted 
 into the new latitudes of mere casual and short 
 acquaintances "Man never continueth in one 
 stay." The tide of human life had ebbed and 
 left him stranded. I heard, as more than once has 
 happened in my long experience, that in the hour 
 of Tom's utmost need there came forward a good 
 old lady of the family. In his younger days Tom 
 never liked her, and she abominated him : they 
 had grown up side by side when young, but all 
 about an aunt's will by which " Tom had far more 
 than his deserts," they had come to like each 
 other's room better than the company more akin 
 than kind to each other. Well, this lady was now 
 disposed to make it up ; for loving is more pleasant 
 than hating : even our enmities fade and pass away
 
 LIBERTY AT COLLEGE. 227 
 
 in this mortal state. So she took Tom in, rheumatics 
 and all, for nearly five years, and then a brief 
 Obituary in a sporting newspaper told of what 
 Mr. Briggs of the Sporting Press once was but 
 now now no more. 
 
 Tom's is only one of many cases in which I 
 have realized the truth that friends one by one 
 drop about us as leaves drop off trees. " By the 
 age of seventy," said Sidney Smith, " I felt like a 
 man in battle, who is quite prepared to see his 
 comrades fall around him." Happy are they who 
 have learnt to depend on themselves alone, or, as 
 time flies fast, they will find themselves wandering 
 among strangers and passed with indifference, as 
 old fellows who have had their day and must 
 make way for others shunted on the road of 
 busy life. 
 
 How little do men like Briggs, Phipps and 
 Belton think of the life before them when just 
 free from college lectures, examinations, and 
 other checks and restraints. They feel as if their 
 troubles of life were ended instead of beginning. 
 One is in a Curacy ; his rector not always pleasant, 
 but always in authority, which he soon makes 
 felt, and even the rector's wife may be an impe- 
 rious mistress too. He has sermons to write, 
 superannuated cottagers to read to, schools and 
 
 15*
 
 228 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 clothing clubs, funerals and weddings to attend, 
 which all demand punctuality. These items open 
 to us a long series of duties, with no lack of paro- 
 chial gossippers and busy-bodies to keep us up to 
 the mark. Such a life soon shows us how much 
 more than this world's usual stock of liberty we 
 had at college, and how much less we should ex- 
 pect any where else. In every other sphere of 
 life we find it the same. The ties perhaps are 
 different, but they are strong ties still. If not 
 " by the sweat of his face," by the fretting 
 of the nerves and by the throbs of an anxious 
 heart, man eats his bread. We may shift our 
 burden but not escape it, and even when we seem 
 to have done so, the very absence of toils without 
 sets free a craving brood of restless cares to run 
 riot from within.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE DEBTOB'S PBOGEESS FIEST PAET. 
 
 " AT first I entered college," said Eichard Lyall, 
 " I hated the very name of debt. My friend Mad- 
 den called upon me a few days before I left home, 
 and said, ' Let me give you one piece of advice ; 
 never order what you have not the money to pay 
 for ; ready money needs no accounts ; but long 
 credit will baffle the calculations of any man 
 alive.' " 
 
 " Oh, that does not apply to me," I answered ; 
 " for I feel quite uncomfortable if I owe any 
 tradesman a shilling." 
 
 " ' So I could say once,' was the reply ; l but 
 before I left Magdalen I could walk about quite 
 at my ease 500 in debt.' 
 
 " I bought my cap and gown at a tailor's shop 
 in the Turl. He said he hoped to have my custom, 
 and would give as long credit as any man. I told 
 him that was no recommendation to me. * I do
 
 230 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 not know that, sir,' he answered : ' you will find 
 the convenience of it after a little while ; such, at 
 least, is usually the case at college.' I am ashamed 
 to say this very cap and gown was not paid for till 
 two years after. 
 
 " My debts grew insensibly ; I forgot that though 
 severally small, they were becoming collectively 
 large. I bought coats and waistcoats of one man, 
 and trousers of another ; books, grocery, wine, 
 pictures, furniture, hosiery ; confectionery to 
 entertain my friends, and other articles, each pur- 
 chased at more shops than one ; these, together 
 with the hire of boats often, and horses occasion- 
 ally, soon caused me, quite unconsciously, to have 
 a list of twenty creditors. At the end of two terms 
 I found that I owed them, as nearly as I could 
 guess for I did not like to ask for bills on an 
 average 5 each. Here, then, were debts to the 
 amount of 100 as a nest-egg ; or, I may say, as so 
 many dragons' teeth sown to raise up a host of 
 enemies to destroy me. 
 
 " This stage of my progress was one of pitiable 
 ignorance and childish heedlessness. I knew 
 nothing of the value of money, never having had 
 above 5 which I could call my own, till the day 
 my father gave me a cheque for 72 12s. as a 
 quarter's allowance at college.
 
 THE DEBTORS PROGRESS. 231 
 
 " Out of this about 47 remained when I had 
 paid battels ; which sum seemed to me so large, 
 that I never thought of estimating how much it 
 would allow for each kind of expenditure ; so it is 
 no wonder that I found my bills amounting to 
 more by half than my allowance. This first stage, 
 I can honestly say, was one of excusable ignorance. 
 Had my father not been exceedingly thoughtless, 
 he would have presumed that I should want occa- 
 sional advice and admonition. He might have re- 
 flected that he was continually surprised at the 
 accumulation of his own expenses, even after all his 
 experience. This should have convinced him at 
 once that the management of money must be diffi- 
 cult to me ; and had he gone to Oxford at the end 
 of my first term, collected my bills, and talked in 
 a friendly way about the company I could afford 
 to keep, and pointed out the extent to which I was 
 outrunning my income, I have no doubt that my 
 present ruin and disgrace would have been averted ; 
 for at that time I was a stranger to the temptations 
 which, at a later period, rendered counsel useless. 
 
 " And here I cannot refrain from observing, that 
 of all the blindness I have ever witnessed, that of 
 the fathers of my fellow-collegians seems to be the 
 most remarkable. 
 
 " If a man brings up a son as a lawyer, a surgeon,
 
 232 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 or a merchant, he makes such an arrangement with 
 a professional man in his own town, that when the 
 hours of business are over, he may take charge of 
 his son under his own roof ; or if he sends him 
 to a distance, he articles or apprentices him to 
 some substantial family man, who undertakes to 
 act a parent's part. But if the same man sends a 
 son to Oxford, though from the number of thought- 
 less youths who meet together, he might feel sure 
 that the temptations must be stronger than in any 
 mercantile town in England, he leaves him without 
 inquiry for three years together. He may say, 
 that he presumes tutors will render his vigilance 
 unnecessary ; but with what reason can he presume 
 that any tutor can adequately perform a parent's 
 part ? Common sense must tell him it would be 
 very difficult to do ; common experience proclaims 
 that it often remains undone. In every newspaper 
 he may read the fact that there is no such check at 
 either university as will prevent a young man from 
 incurring as many debts as the tradesmen believe 
 he will be able to pay. To this extent the father 
 knows his son may everywhere obtain credit ; but 
 at Oxford or Cambridge he may be sure that he will 
 be trusted to a larger amount, because, as a mem 
 ber of a university, he is naturally presumed to 
 have more money at his command.
 
 FATHERS RATHER BLIND. 233 
 
 " A second observation I have made about 
 fathers is, that when they do attempt to advise or 
 instruct their sons, they evince such an ignorance 
 of their ways, and such want of sympathy for their 
 feelings, that they utterly fail in gaining their con- 
 fidence. Once, and only once, did I ever hear a 
 man say that he could call his father a truly confi- 
 dential adviser and a friend. For the most part, a 
 father and ' father confessor ' are two widely 
 different characters. I have heard many a man 
 declare, that if his father had ever manifested in- 
 dulgence and consideration towards him, instead 
 of a distant austerity and impatience, as if he ex- 
 pected to find him a very model of perfection, he 
 should have been glad to have asked his advice and 
 assistance at a period when he might have avoided 
 the most ruinous consequences. 
 
 "Quite recently a father was speaking of his 
 son's follies and extravagance as a peculiar and 
 exceptional hardship. ' Oh ! ' I said, ' there was 
 nothing exceptional in his teething and hooping- 
 cough as a child. Eemember your own feelings 
 and thoughtlessness at the age of twenty. Be 
 sensible and expect the same phases and de- 
 velopment in him.' 
 
 " But to return from this digression and writing 
 of college temptations (as they were some fifty
 
 234 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 years since) I said that debts to the amount of 
 100 accumulated in my first two terms. 
 
 " This completed the first stage in the debtor's 
 progress the state of Ignorance and Heedlessness. 
 This was followed by a second, which I may call 
 the stage of Temptation. 
 
 " I never had any of the qualifications of a read- 
 ing man. I went to Oxford to take a common 
 degree without hope of honours, consequently, 
 having few resources from within, I had to seek 
 those from without. The first source of tempta- 
 tion was the want of the family fireside. When I 
 lived at home, so long as I could sit with my feet 
 on my father's fender and sip a glass of negus after 
 dinner, and talk to my sisters, or go with them 
 occasionally to spend the evening with a neighbour, 
 I was perfectly contented. A few shillings spent 
 in cigars, and sometimes the cost of a ticket for a 
 ball, was all I had occasion to spend. But at 
 college, this fireside, or the amusements which 
 supplied its place, were ruinously expensive. 
 
 " I must explain, that at five o'clock we meet at 
 dinner to the number of ten, twelve or fifteen men 
 at each table. The conversation is lively and in- 
 spiriting, about the college boat, the steeple chase, 
 or the hunt, or some match to come off between 
 some two of the sporting set. As soon as dinner is
 
 TEMPTATIONS TO EXPENSE. 235 
 
 over a man will naturally desire to carry on the 
 same conversation over a glass of wine. If you re- 
 fuse, you must separate from your friends as they 
 run helter-skelter up the staircase to the room of the 
 man whose turn it is to furnish the wine : you must 
 endure to be called a slow fellow, and may some- 
 times be nearly pulled to pieces by some of the 
 party, who lay hold of your gown to lead you off 
 by force ; for these high and jovial spirits will take 
 no denial. If you persist, and say you cannot join 
 them, you must sport your oak, and shut yourself 
 into your room and all intruders out, and there 
 remain alone in the dumps, till the chapel bell calls 
 you to encounter the same set of men again more 
 boisterous even than before. After chapel you 
 must sit in solitude all the rest of the evening. 
 
 " Nor is this all : society cannot be kept up with 
 this seclusion. You must forego your position in 
 your college, and sink down among a set of slow 
 men whom you do not like, and who, as is too often 
 true of slow and economical men at college, are 
 not exactly of the style and stamp you would de- 
 sire to characterise your associates. Of course this 
 does not apply to studious men. A love of litera- 
 ture is a great safeguard : it produces habits of 
 recreation and visiting very inexpensive. Neither 
 does the full force of this temptation apply to those
 
 236 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 who resolutely resist from the first. I am only speak- 
 ing of the very common case of men who inadver- 
 tently become associated with those in whose society 
 they delight, but cannot afford to keep. From this 
 you may estimate the degree of self-denial required, 
 and the strong temptation that all but reading 
 men must feel to join a wine set every day after 
 dinner. I do not say that all even of those who 
 are not reading men are so tempted ; I speak only 
 of men who are what every father would wish his 
 son to be, men of honourable emulation, fine- 
 spirited lads, and general favourites with their 
 companions. 
 
 " Supposing, then, that a high-spirited lad does 
 not resist this fireside temptation, as we will call it, 
 and, believe me, it is one of the most trying 
 description ; let us follow out this indulgence in 
 all its costs and consequences, and consider what 
 it involves. 
 
 " First of all, it involves a large consumption of 
 wine, and a formal wine party, with a handsome 
 dessert, at least once a fortnight. Of course in the 
 same society there will be an occasional inter- 
 change of breakfasts and suppers. In all these 
 entertainments the most expensive men set the 
 fashion ; and even those who desire to be most 
 economical will strive not to be outdone. ' While
 
 TEMPTATIONS VARIOUS. 237 
 
 we are in for it,' you hear men say, ' a pound more 
 or less is not worth saving ; least of all, at the risk 
 of being called shabby.' The cost of this kind 
 of society is not confined to college walls. Who 
 can hear of all the animating exploits of the 
 hunting field without desiring to have just one 
 day to see what hunting is like ? Who can sit 
 by, especially when the bottle has gone freely 
 round, and hear of a proposal to order a buggy 
 and drive over to see some theatricals in a barn, 
 or to enjoy other scenes of life and jollity, which, 
 though certainly it is very foolish, yet it must be 
 confessed that some of the gravest fathers feel 
 merry as they hear it told in the vacation, little 
 suspecting that it is a kind of fun for which they 
 will one day have to pay Who can hear this, and 
 at all times say, ' No, I can't afford it ? you may 
 go every one of you, but I shall stay at home.' 
 
 " The force of this temptation may be the better 
 appreciated when I remark, that here again a man 
 feels that he loses his standing, and is called, and 
 actually becomes and feels himself, a slow fellow 
 compared with the rest of his set, unless he some- 
 times joins their sprees, and shows that he is as 
 much up to fun as any of them. As to expense, 
 he is told it need only be for once in a way and 
 that it is not as if a man were to keep a couple of
 
 238 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 hunters for three years together. So he thinks, 
 good easy man, there is no reason why he should 
 not enjoy just one hunt, or only one tandem ; or 
 merely to say he has done such a thing, enter 
 a horse in one positively the last steeple chase. 
 
 " However, say, my dear old college friends, is it 
 not too true, that of all temptations in this mortal 
 world, one of the most irresistible is a craving for 
 artificial excitement- and an impatience of that 
 ennui which is the reaction produced by the first 
 cup of pleasure, and which is only to be allayed 
 even for the time by a yet larger draught from a 
 second ? 
 
 " Temptation is like a sly old wheedling beggar 
 that must be frowned off our premises at first 
 sight. We must not allow him to come near us, 
 or listen to his guileful tale. If once you give 
 way to his importunity, and relieve his necessities, 
 he will not only come again far bolder than before, 
 but he will tell a dozen others, each more urgent 
 than the last, and you will be beset from all 
 quarters and on all pretences every hour in the 
 day. 
 
 " Again, if you cannot bear to be outdone in 
 doors, you will be equally reluctant when out. 
 If you have hunted or driven a tandem once to 
 please others, you will do so a second time to
 
 HOW TEMPTATIONS MULTIPLY. 239 
 
 please yourself. Probably you may be compli- 
 mented on your dexterity by some who are judges, 
 or taunted by some who are not, and may thus be 
 induced to go and try some famous leap, or drive 
 a tandem once more, if it be only to make some 
 casual vaunting good. On each of these occasions 
 so consistent a thing, and so complete in all its 
 branches is extravagance, you will perhaps be too 
 late for hall, and have to pay for a dinner and 
 bottle of wine at a coffee-house. 
 
 " But all this time, you will ask me, has a man 
 no fears of future consequences, no compunctions 
 of conscience ? His head grows more and more 
 in a whirl : he intends soon to pull up ; but to-day 
 and to-morrow and the ne xt day steal silently on : 
 the longer he yields to temptation, and the more 
 he is accustomed to danger, the more familiar it 
 grows, and the less he fears it. He feels as yet 
 none of the horrors of which he had heard. He 
 does not see how deeply he is becoming involved ; 
 for a man's liabilities, whether moral or pecuniary, 
 are not to be taken in at a mere general view. 
 Satan knows that what a man thinks he always 
 can do he never will do ; the principle on which 
 many cockneys never see St. Paul's nor sinners 
 Heaven ! So on goes the spendthrift. If his first 
 stage was one of ignorance and heedlessness, the
 
 240 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 second is one of wilful blindness and temptation. 
 Prom this we will pass to 
 
 " The third stage in the debtor's progress -the 
 stage of Desperation. 
 
 " But before I proceed, I must observe, that if I 
 appear to extenuate my extravagance by dwelling 
 on my temptations, I have a far more laudable 
 purpose in view, which I must forego if I paint 
 my life in colours either darker or brighter than it 
 deserves. 
 
 " I do not deny that my extravagance was truly 
 disgraceful ; yet so easy and gradual was the des- 
 cent so smooth and imperceptible my motion to 
 the lowest gulf of ruin that I was perfectly un- 
 conscious of the time I was involved beyond any 
 reasonable hope of retrieving. I would have all 
 collegians take warning, and I would equally call 
 upon their parents. For if once a young man 
 completes the first stage of ignorance and heed- 
 lessness in money matters, the next thing is to be 
 the victim of seducing and extravagant habits, 
 which throw a veil over his eyes, and make him 
 feel most secure when most in danger, until at last 
 his position can no longer be disguised, he is forced 
 to see it, is thrown into desperation, and becomes 
 prepared for such scenes as I am now about to dis- 
 close.
 
 TROUBLES INQREASE. 241 
 
 " At my father's death I was entitled to an estate 
 of between three and four hundred a year. Still 
 I never contemplated on that account exceeding 
 my college allowance of 250/. a year. When a 
 year and a half had passed away, I found that 
 extravagance in horses, for which I thought I 
 could partly compensate by greater economy in 
 other respects, had involved heavier tavern bills, 
 and a constant drain of ready money for turn- 
 pikes, ostlers, and ' refreshment for man and 
 horse.' I also found that I had much more to 
 pay for clothes, and, to crown all, 40/. for a horse 
 I had staked and killed. 
 
 " The death of John Sheard's mare produced 
 an effect of which I had no conception. My 
 bookseller and grocer, and every horse-dealer 
 of whom I had hired, sent me in their bills, and 
 requested payment. Thinking this very ex- 
 traordinary, I went immediately to a friend 
 of sixteen terms' standing, and told him that 
 perhaps he had experience enough to ex- 
 plain why bad luck should come upon me all at 
 once. 
 
 " ' Say no more,' said he : ' when first I heard 
 
 of your accident, I observed, A hint for the duns. 
 
 The truth is, you are going too fast. After a 
 
 heavy loss comes a run upon a bank do you 
 
 VOL. i. 16
 
 242 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 understand ? Pray how many children has your 
 father ? ' 
 
 " Eight besides myself." 
 
 " ' He does not drive four in hand, or cut a 
 dash, I presume ? ' 
 
 " No : he only keeps a one-horse chaise, with a 
 leather head and apron, for a rainy Sunday. 
 
 " A sort of cruelty trap, I suppose, to carry all 
 the family ? " 
 
 " Well, something like it ; but what has that to 
 do with the present question ? 
 
 " ' Why, surely you are not so green as all that ? 
 If the governor's pace is slow, and the son's pace 
 is fast do you understand now ? ' 
 
 " What ! do you mean to say that the Oxford 
 tradesmen calculate the fortune of the fathers 
 before they trust the sons ? Why, cannot any 
 man in Oxford walk into every shop in the 
 High Street, and be but too gladly served, and 
 almost forced to book, instead of pay for, what- 
 ever he pleases to take ? and does not the 
 tradesman thank him for his custom, and offer 
 him credit before he even asks his name and 
 college ? 
 
 " ' No. If the Oxford tradesmen are so accom- 
 modating, they have altered their style of business 
 uncommonly.'
 
 FRIENDLY EXPLANATIONS. 243 
 
 " No ! What do you mean ? Why, my good 
 fellow, it is notorious! 
 
 " ' That is to say, if a Servitor or Bible clerk 
 had a fancy to a fifty-guinea chronometer, you 
 think he would be offered the same at four years' 
 credit ? He would not have credit for a day, nor 
 be allowed to put it in his pocket till he had paid 
 the money. 
 
 " ' The case is this : You and I belong to 
 a highly respectable college. Nearly all the 
 men here are presumed to succeed to an in- 
 dependent fortune. The very name of such a 
 college as this is enough to satisfy a tradesman 
 that we may be safely trusted to some small 
 amount without inquiry. This, however, is not 
 the case with the men of all colleges. The 
 same order which will be executed most 
 readily for Wyndham Jones of Christchurch, 
 will be refused, unless some tutor will be 
 answerable for its payment, to David Jones of 
 Jesus. Not that the one may not be as worthy 
 of credit as the other, but because the sons of 
 Welsh gentlemen have smaller incomes than 
 ourselves, and therefore they would excite sus- 
 picion if they were not more cautious of incurring 
 debts.' 
 
 " But why have not the tradesmen been dunning 
 
 16*
 
 244 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 Cotton and Langworthy they owe double as 
 much as I do ? 
 
 " ' For two reasons. They are the sons of richer 
 men. Cotton would be trusted to any extent. 
 His father's estates are in this county. His elder 
 brother was here before him. He kept his 
 hunters, and dashed away ; and within a year 
 after his degree he walked round the town with a 
 cheque book in his hand, and as he paid money to 
 the extent of every man's claim, he seemed quite 
 delighted to think of the ease with which he could 
 do it. Still, neither he nor Cotton, junior, are 
 likely men to throw money idly away. Their 
 practice has been to collect their accounts, and 
 examine them regularly every term.' 
 
 " But what is the other reason that these men 
 gain such uninterrupted credit ? " 
 
 " ' Because they differ very widely from you in 
 their way of asking it. I have seen you go into a 
 shop, and order things without bargaining for the 
 price, or showing any regard for the cash. 
 " When we observe that kind of carelessness," 
 said an Oxford tradesman to me, " it is quite plain 
 the credit is not safe. No, gentlemen are more 
 careful about the cost of things than they who 
 have a certain fund from which to draw, and who 
 look forward to a certain time in which they have
 
 OXFORD CREDITORS AND THEIR WAYS. 245 
 
 resolved to cash up." This is a shrewd remark, 
 and one of which I have observed the truth in 
 many instances. The reason is, that these careless 
 customers feel that they are quite at a tradesman's 
 mercy : they are afraid to think of their responsi- 
 bilities, or to look their creditor in the face.' 
 
 "But do you think they know my father is 
 poor? 
 
 " ' I think that they have no assurance that he 
 is rich. They have trusted you hitherto on the 
 credit of your name and college. But now seeing 
 you have quickened your pace a little, that all 
 your- bills together must make a larger sum than 
 
 / 
 
 they can risk without better security than your 
 mere name as a gentleman, and finding you at a 
 steeple chase, and 40/. added at one fell sw^oop 
 for the horse you have killed, depend upon it they 
 have conferred together, and suspecting you may 
 not command money for all, every man is in a 
 hurry to get his bill paid first. 
 
 " ' I can assure you I have authority for what I 
 say. " There are no better paymasters than the 
 collegians," said one of your creditors to me last 
 term, " if a man will only credit with care and 
 discretion. If a gentleman orders no more boots 
 and shoes of me than he may be supposed to wear, 
 and if he pays me a small sum occasionally on
 
 246 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 account, I will allow a balance increasing from ten 
 to fifteen pounds to stand over till he takes his 
 degree, or even longer, in consideration of con- 
 tinued custom from the country. I cannot employ 
 my capital better ; of course I must charge a 
 credit price, but this will not pay for four years' 
 credit ; nor can any charges pay for such credit, 
 if it extends to a whole bill, and not to a small 
 balance only. ' 
 
 " I must here stop to explain points connected 
 with the credit system. Four years' credit is, 
 at least, twenty per cent, deducted from profits. 
 It is evident that a tradesman who gave such 
 accommodation to all his customers must charge at 
 least twenty-five per cent., that is, one fourth more 
 than the ready-money dealer, to gain a livelihood. 
 This, however, is impracticable. The truth is, 
 Oxford tradesmen do not give four years' credit in 
 the general way of business . I remember on one 
 occasion buying an article of a tailor who was a 
 noted long-credit man. He told me, ' Sir, I never 
 dun.' I was almost induced to make a purchase 
 under this assurance, and feeling that I could pay 
 when quite convenient. The result was this : 
 three or four times in about as many weeks I was 
 pestered for orders by a man who brought round 
 fancy patterns for trousers and waistcoats. I was
 
 TRADESMEN AND THE CREDIT SYSTEM. 247 
 
 continually importuned not to pay my old debt, 
 but to contract new. ' Of course,' said one of my 
 friends, ' if you want tick you must keep the bill 
 going, and feed the duns.' At the end of the year, 
 finding I could give no more orders, this long- 
 credit man sent in his bill, 'presuming I had 
 closed my account. ' 
 
 This is not a respectable way of doing business, 
 and I am happy to say it is not a common way. 
 Oxford tradesmen feel and openly complain that 
 they are materially injured by such practices. 
 Almost all tradesmen will say that they will give 
 good credit, and that gentlemen may suit them- 
 selves. Many tradesmen in every town will say, 
 on particular occasions, " Take this, sir, and I will 
 stand my chance : pay when you please ; " but 
 those who specify four or five years' credit as a 
 bait to every customer, and for every order 
 indifferently, are a class of men with whom col- 
 legians should be very cautious in dealing. I 
 know, from experience, they do not mean what 
 they say, but sometimes more and sometimes less. 
 One trick is to let a man contract a long bill, and 
 then, on some special pretence, put it in the hands 
 of an accountant, who claims payment at once. 
 Another object they have in view is to extort, 
 through fear of enforcing immediate payment,
 
 248 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 numerous orders at exorbitant prices. And when 
 they have carried this system as far as they can, 
 they have another, which will be learnt from the 
 sequel. 
 
 As every demand creates a supply, where there 
 are many fools there will necessary be some 
 knaves. The university officers look out so 
 sharply to detect malpractices, that collegians 
 must expect to find the sharpest practitioners 
 among the non-resident tradesmen who visit 
 Oxford only for orders. The growing pre- 
 judice against Oxford tradesmen is greatly owing 
 to the success of a set of swindlers, who are more 
 properly to be considered as bill-brokers and 
 money-lenders than regular tradesmen. 
 
 " The same bootmaker who let me so much into 
 the secrets of his practice," continued my friend, 
 "added one observation which bears chiefly on 
 your present case. ' There was Mr. Watfield, 6f 
 Oriel, by whom I lost 30. This was my own 
 fault. When I heard that he had killed Seckham's 
 horse in a steeple chase, I ought to have insisted 
 on having my account settled immediately.' 
 
 "Again, Fletcher, the pastrycook, observed of 
 Bullen, when his father refused to pay his debts, 
 that he would never have trusted him to such an 
 extent had he not observed that when his father
 
 DIFFICULTIES EXPLAINED. 249 
 
 came to see him, they went out hunting together. 
 It was very hard, he complained, a man should 
 say 60 was too large a bill for his son to 
 contract for suppers, breakfasts, and desserts, 
 during many terms, when he countenanced his 
 hunting. 
 
 " This, and much more conversation of the same 
 kind, opened my eyes. But the question was, how 
 to meet the bills. Many painfully anxious 
 thoughts passed through my mind when I found 
 that part, at least, of every bill must be paid. 
 How to apply to my father for money I knew not ; 
 I was certain he would be wholly unprepared for 
 such a disclosure. Besides, the worst part of my 
 difficulty was, that he had often talked in my 
 presence of the unprincipled extravagance of 
 others^, when I little thought that my own case 
 was irretrievable. I had said, yes, yes, no, no, and 
 thus seemed fully to fall in with all his opinions. 
 Had he ever asked me the plain question, ' Do you 
 owe money ? ' I should have said, 4 Yes,' or, at 
 all events, I could have truly said, ' I do owe a 
 little, but I hope to set all right soon.' Still, the 
 general impression he had received was such, 
 that my sisters once told me that my father said 
 he learnt from me that I did not owe a shilling. 
 My answer was, ' I never said so ; but let him be
 
 250 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 happy in his error I do not owe anything to 
 signify.' 
 
 " This being the impression on my father's mind, 
 I felt that he would be above measure concerned, 
 because it had always been his boast that I never 
 told him a lie. However, the bitter draught could 
 not be put aside ; and I wrote to this effect that 
 I was pressed for money, having had the mis- 
 fortune to kill a horse, valued at 40 that I had 
 also been so imprudent as to omit keeping 
 accounts, and that, therefore, I had otherwise 
 exceeded my income in books and other articles 
 that if he would oblige me with 100 I would use 
 the strictest economy for the future. 
 
 "At the same time I wrote to my sisters, to 
 remove any unfavourable impression, if my father 
 thought that I had deceived him. And here I will 
 declare that, selfish as I may appear to be, if by 
 any sacrifice I could have saved myself the pain 
 of writing that letter, I would have done it with 
 all my heart. 
 
 "The above letter was the truth, but not the 
 whole truth ; and almost the truth is often the 
 greatest lie that can be told. At least, it is no less 
 prejudicial to a man's reputation. And so it 
 proved in my case. 
 
 " The next post brought a very kind letter from
 
 THE LONG-SUFFERING FATHER. 251 
 
 my father, with a cheque for 100. He said that 
 killing the horse was an accident, and he would 
 answer for it, that in this instance a dead horse 
 was worth double as much as a live one. As to 
 the remaining sixty pounds, some of it, he was 
 glad to see, was for books, and he nattered himself 
 I was forming a taste for literature ; and since I 
 had been at college nearly two years, perhaps he 
 should be thankful I had managed my money so 
 well, especially as I was in the first society. He 
 quite entered into the satisfaction I should feel at 
 clearing off all encumbrances, and beginning as it 
 were over again. He also added some hints on 
 the way to keep accounts. 
 
 "A letter from my sister informed me there 
 had been a terrible breeze at home, first, about 
 me, secondly, between my father and mother, 
 arising out of one of those most provoking of 
 all remarks, ' I told you how it would be, my 
 dear.' They remarked that the money was 
 very inconvenient ; indeed my father had 
 only lately said he could not afford a new 
 pianoforte. However, all had blown over, and 
 his annoyance had turned to compassion towards 
 myself. 
 
 " Well, thought I, one thing is plain, my father 
 believes this 100 will pay all ; I must economise,
 
 252 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 come what will, I can never acknowledge that I 
 owe another penny. 
 
 " When I began to make the money go as far 
 as possible to satisfy the most clamorous of my 
 creditors, I found that the owner of the horse 
 could be prevailed upon to wait. So this bill, 
 the main ground of my application to my father, 
 remained unpaid. Still the 100 was soon fritted 
 away among a number of claimants, without 
 doing much either to allay their discontent or to 
 reduce their bills. 
 
 " This was merely stopping a gap I should 
 say, one of many gaps and only a temporary 
 stoppage after all. One and all remarked they 
 should be sorry to put me to inconvenience, and 
 trusted I should continue as good a customer as 
 heretofore. Now, for the first time, I found the 
 consequence of having dealt with more than one 
 tradesman for the same article. When I thought 
 of ordering as few clothes or boots as possible, it 
 would occur to me Shanter will be jealous lest 
 Mather should supply my summer clothes, and 
 Eefton would be equally suspicious of Baldwin 
 about my boots ; to prevent being dunned I must 
 give occasional orders to all ; but what then 
 becomes of my resolution to economise ? As to 
 stable keepers, every man who wants to ride on
 
 DEBTORS AND DUNS. 253 
 
 a fine day must order a horse just where he can 
 find one left in the stable ; so it may easily be 
 supposed that I had some small account with every 
 dealer in Oxford. Their hostlers go the circuit of 
 the colleges regular every day about breakfast 
 time ; and I cannot now help laughing when I 
 think of the group of ugly customers which they 
 formed one morning when I looked out and found 
 three of them together, with one dog-fancier and 
 a man who would provide either rats to hunt or 
 pigeons to shoot, were besieging my door at the 
 same time. My friends soon told me that I could 
 not think of stopping : if I ceased dealing with a 
 tradesman, I must close his account in a business- 
 like manner. This proved too true. Still, of the 
 majority of my tradesmen I have no reason to 
 complain. They came honestly for their money : 
 if they were put off their tack by my talking 
 about orders, this was my fault. Certainly I can- 
 not fairly say that there was any attempt to take 
 advantage of my situation by the majority. Still, 
 whenever I gave an order, I was in no fair position 
 to bargain about price ; so of course, my bills 
 went on increasing. At last, however, a new kind 
 of mischief arose to complete my ruin. 
 
 " Sheard, whose horse I killed, became very 
 short of money. Fifty-three pounds was the
 
 254 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 amount of his bill, and an immediate discharge 
 he must have. * Very sorry, sir but my creditors 
 won't wait no more nor yours.' 
 
 " What was to be done ? That my father 
 should be applied to a second time, and on 
 account of the same dead horse which he thought 
 he had paid for, was a thought not to be endured. 
 I had a week to arrange matters, and before the 
 day of payment arrived the following occurrence 
 took place : 
 
 " One of the long-credit tradesmen, a money- 
 lender in disguise, who no doubt knew how far I 
 was embarrassed, and might perhaps have heard 
 that I had a small fortune in expectancy, called 
 one morning just as I was going to lecture. I 
 was accordingly about to dismiss him very briefly 
 when he seemed disposed to stand his ground, put 
 on a placid air, but rather like that of a man who 
 stood on the higher ground of the two, and said 
 something to the effect of ' Wished to settle a 
 little business some arrangement to propose 
 between you and me, sir. You know business, 
 sir something definite.' So saying, he laid down 
 an account of about thirty-five pounds for clothes. 
 
 " Some few words escaped me, showing my 
 annoyance and vexation, when he said, ' Be easy, 
 sir ; if you knew the gentlemen I see, and the
 
 THE MONEY LENDER. 255 
 
 ease and facility of the arrangements which I 
 suggest, you 
 
 " ' The fact is,' I said, ' I have a heavy bill for 
 a horse I staked ; how to meet it I know not.' 
 
 " ' Indeed ! sir. A gentleman of your name 
 and respectability you never need be at a loss. 
 Allow me, sir, to ' 
 
 " ' Name or not money's wanted now.' 
 
 " ' Money ! true. But your name will raise 
 money which will cover my account and the other 
 too.' 
 
 " Suffice it to say, by the evening of that day I 
 had been in communication with a money-lender 
 his agent, doubtless and it was arranged that 
 in three days I should receive 110, for which I 
 was to accept a five months' bill for 150. In 
 other words, to borrow 110 I paid 40 as 
 interest in advance ! Of course this was not 
 concluded till I mentioned all particulars of the 
 land to which I was entitled, and the tenant's 
 name. 
 
 " But had I no scruple, you will ask, in assent- 
 ing to terms so exorbitant ? Yes, I saw the 
 matter as clearly then as now, but what was my 
 alternative? If my creditors had been alarmed 
 at the loss of the horse, a second difficulty, to the 
 amount of 75, would cause every debt I owed
 
 256 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 to be placed in a lawyer's hands. I should have 
 been summoned to the Vice-Chancellor's Court by 
 twenty creditors at least. This would reach the 
 tutor's ear, and my father would be informed 
 at once. To apply to him would be to forfeit his 
 confidence for ever. He would believe me the 
 most shameless of liars, though I can truly declare 
 that my conscience did not accuse me of false- 
 hood when I wrote the letter. I felt I need 
 disclose no more bad news than necessary ; and in 
 saying less than the truth, and mentioning the bill 
 for books in preference for others, you may say I 
 meant to deceive and did deceive ; still the lie 
 was so far diluted and disguised, that it was 
 almost as palatable as truth. Then that unlucky 
 horse ! ' If you intended to pay for it why did 
 you not pay for it ? ' my father would say ; and 
 who is there that has not felt that when an 
 explanation of a fault (however true), takes many 
 words, it is better to let judgment go by default 
 than to be suspected of an ingenious lie. 
 
 Strange ! the second friend in the same scrape ! 
 
 " Thank God ! I hate a lie as much as any man ; 
 but experience has shown me that the only 
 guardian of truth is innocence. Once part the 
 virtues, and they lose their strength. Break one 
 commandment, and we may well believe we are
 
 "FLYING A KITE." 257 
 
 guilty of all; for we are capable of all. There 
 would not be so many lies told if men were better 
 judges of truth in all its forms and fair propor- 
 tions. As it is, I truly believe that all men are 
 liars, for I observe that all men use their words 
 to garnish their actions and put the best side of 
 their conduct uppermost ; though in life there are 
 so many thousand trivial sayings and doings to 
 one which forms so prominent a stumbling-block 
 as this forty-pound dead horse, that many men 
 live and die with a character for truth, though no 
 more their due than mine. 
 
 " The last piece of reasoning which entered my 
 head and quieted my scruples before I put my 
 name to the bill was the following : This extrava- 
 gance injures no one's piece of mind but my own. 
 I had rather sign away a thousand pounds than 
 distress my father, after his late liberality, for a 
 penny. 
 
 " This thought soothed me, as though I were 
 acting from a generous principle. Still the very 
 name of a bill transaction, and signing my name 
 for money, sounded so ominous in my ears, that 
 it made me nervous in the extreme. Giving a 
 note-of-hand was associated in my mind with 
 insolvency and bankruptcy, I had even an in- 
 stinctive dread of being betrayed into forgery ; 
 VOL, I. 17
 
 258 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 and, to say the truth, when I met the bill-broker, 
 I had taken so much wine to keep my spirits up, 
 and had so far lost my self-command from pro- 
 tracted excitement, that had some fraudulent 
 instrument of any other kind been prepared, I 
 might have signed it, to my utter ruin. 
 
 "Nor was this my only danger. I have since 
 heard that it is a common practice with money- 
 lenders to obtain a signature to a bill, and im- 
 mediately sue upon it, filling up the date as they 
 please, while they leave their victim in their office, 
 under a pretence of going to fetch the cash. 
 When inquiry is made, the answer is, that the 
 person is a stranger, and has been gone some 
 time. 
 
 " A gentleman of my acquaintance was swindled 
 in this manner of an acknowledgment for 400 
 many years since by the famous Minter Hart. He 
 was obliged to remain in France till that gentle- 
 man-like, most accomplished, and fascinating knave 
 (for such he was described to me) died on his way 
 to Botany Bay. 
 
 " As I came away from the coffee-house at which 
 I encountered this sharper, I met his friend the 
 tailor. He saw I was nervous, and tried to laugh 
 my concern away. He pretended that the meeting 
 was accidental, and that he knew but little of the
 
 A BILL TRANSACTION. 259 
 
 money-lender. As I paid him his account of 35, 
 he remarked, ' It is not that there is anything so 
 extraordinary in this arrangement you have thought 
 of, sir ; but if I might advise, I would not mention 
 it, for the college authorities are very particular ; 
 you would be expelled to a certainty. Any trades- 
 man would be ruined if he were known to have 
 any such dealing. That man does business in 
 town his visits to Oxford pay him pretty well 
 though. Do not mention this to your fellow- 
 collegians : still I could mention one of your friends 
 who has had this kind of accommodation more than 
 once. You know Mr. Vallance doubtless he has 
 not told you, sir.' ' 
 
 So far I have related the confessions of this 
 ruined collegian in nearly the very words in which 
 I heard them at different times from himself. The 
 remainder I learned partly from his mother and 
 partly from his solicitor. 
 
 17*
 
 CHAPTER XIH. 
 
 THE DEBTOR'S PKOGKESS SECOND PAET. 
 
 A WIDOW in her loneliness is a common character 
 in works of fiction ; I trust, however, that so 
 interesting a personage will not prejudice the 
 credibility of a tale of simple, though distressing, 
 facts. Richard Ly all's father did not live to hear 
 of his son's headlong career, but died, after a short 
 illness, within a few months of the day on which 
 his son would be of age to take his estate. To 
 this time the father had looked forward, in the 
 full confidence of obtaining his son's consent and 
 signature to a legal instrument, making over part 
 of the estate which was settled on him, as 
 the eldest son, for the benefit of his mother and 
 sisters. Richard, notwithstanding, consented to 
 give up the same portion of his inheritance that his 
 father intended to recommend. 
 
 Before Mr. Ly all's death, however, the first bill 
 had become due ; many other accounts had also 
 been sent in, adding still farther to his embarrass-
 
 LYALUS EYES ARE OPENED. 261 
 
 ment. That a bill for 150 should be dishonoured, 
 he had learnt was a very serious matter at all 
 times, and more especially in his case ; because, 
 expulsion threatened him on the one hand, and his 
 father's reproaches on the other. The money- 
 lender was, of course, aware of all these holds 
 upon his creditor, and being also quite confident 
 that accommodation such is the term for a lift 
 on the road to ruin could not be very readily 
 procured from any other quarter, he took care to 
 be at hand just at the time that the day of pay- 
 ment had arrived. 
 
 " ' Just called to say, sir, that the bill will be 
 due on Thursday I should not mention it in the 
 common way of business, but college gentlemen 
 are inexperienced, and do not consider that the 
 man who holds a bill does not wait like another 
 creditor.' 
 
 " ' The man who holds the bill ! Why you hold 
 it, don't you ? ' 
 
 " ' I hold it ! Excuse me, sir ; gone through 
 twenty hands at least, I should think, since it left 
 mine. A bill with such a name as yours, sir, 
 circulates like Bank of England paper.' 
 
 " This puzzled me quite," said Lyall, " for I 
 did not understand the nature of this new kind of 
 debt which I had contracted ; but at once all
 
 262 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 the consequences flashed before my mind, and 
 I said : 
 
 " ' Why, then, twenty people at least must know 
 that I have been reduced to the necessity of accept- 
 ing of this accommodation ? ' 
 
 " ' Certainly, yes, certainly ; but quite in the 
 way of business : what of that, sir ? ' 
 
 " ' And any tutor may ' 
 
 " ' No, sir, no. Allow me : we understand 
 business too well for that, sir. Tutors have no such 
 debts as can cause them to be paid by bills ; tutors 
 pay tradesmen, not tradesmen tutors, except that a 
 note may pass back to them in change ; and no man 
 pays a bill as small change, you know, sir.' 
 
 " So far all seemed satisfactory ; but it w T as no 
 longer a mystery why the rest of my creditors had 
 become more and more impatient to have their 
 accounts settled ; besides, this money-lender had a 
 direct interest in alarming them, for the purpose of 
 adding to my perplexity. 
 
 " ' Good morning, sir,' he said, making a pretence, 
 no doubt only a pretence, to go : ' excuse my 
 troubling you, sir, but young gentlemen are apt 
 not to know that the holder of a bill will sue at 
 once if cash is not forthcoming ; besides, this is in a 
 banker's hands, I suspect, and then there is no 
 alternative. Good morning.'
 
 " ACCOMMODATION" QUESTIONABLE. 263 
 
 " ' Stay stay one moment ' 
 
 " ' I have an engagement, sir. Nothing more, 
 sir ; merely that just in passing.' 
 
 " Of course I was now resolved on detaining 
 him. Indeed it is really wonderful how eager he 
 made me by this pretended indifference. In a few 
 minutes I had admitted that I was unprepared 
 to meet the bill, and indeed, that I was in a 
 position rather to increase my debts than to defray 
 them. 
 
 " We soon began to talk about further accom- 
 modation. He asked me how many months I 
 wanted of being of age. He urged the serious risk 
 he had run from my being a minor ; at last, how- 
 ever, he said he would not determine anything at 
 the time, but gave me his address, and persisted 
 in leaving me. 
 
 " By the next evening I had a second interview 
 with my tormentor, and in consideration of his 
 arranging to take up this bill for me it proved to 
 be in his own hands all the while I had given 
 another bill for 250." 
 
 Before the second bill became due, Eichard Lyall 
 was called home on account of his father's death : 
 it was then that he completed the settlement to 
 which I have alluded, and found himself possessed, 
 no longer of a mere allowance of 250 a year,
 
 264 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 but of about 360 a year, from rents of property 
 at his own entire disposal. 
 
 It were long to tell, and I know not that I could 
 recollect, the various links in the chain which had 
 thus artfully begun to be thrown around him ; but 
 suffice it to say that within three years not one 
 shilling of this estate could he call his own. 
 
 But why, it will be asked, did he not immediately 
 inform his solicitor of the extent and nature of his 
 liabilities, and stop the nefarious system at once ? 
 I know not ; except that when a man feels he is 
 doing a foolish thing, a man of sound sense and 
 the friend of his family is not quite the person to 
 whom he would make it known ; besides, young 
 men are very ignorant of business ; and when they 
 can state a matter to themselves as a mere question 
 about a hundred pounds more or less, all persons 
 of experience can testify that they too often ruin 
 themselves before they are aware of their danger. 
 
 The news that a minor has succeeded to his 
 estate soon spreads, so the money-lender was soon 
 on the way to offer Lyall accommodation on easier 
 terms ; because now, as he observed, he had 
 security to give, though the true reason was that 
 he could raise money from other sources. He 
 made very light of the bill which he held, suggested 
 that it should be renewed, and observed that when
 
 HIGH SOCIETY, IF PAID FOR. 265 
 
 one of Mr. Lyall's leases fell in, it would be quite 
 time enough to settle. 
 
 Eelying on the ease and affluence of his circum- 
 stances, and finding that he was no longer pressed 
 by any creditors in Oxford, Lyall made repeated 
 visits to town. His great weakness was ambition 
 to be noticed by persons of title. Nothing is more 
 easy than for a young man who is a gentleman by 
 birth, if he has plenty of loose cash, to gain an in- 
 troduction to what is called high society ; though 
 to obtain an honourable footing and terms of 
 respect with the more honourable members of the 
 aristocracy is quite another matter. But out of so 
 large a class there will always be some to whom a 
 good-natured fool or an easy dupe is so useful a 
 character that they cannot afford to be particular ; 
 accordingly Lyall was soon flattered by the signal 
 
 honour of sitting in Lord 's box at the Opera, 
 
 after paying for a dinner for him and his friends 
 at Long's Hotel, not to mention lending him 
 money and cutting in at a game of Van John for 
 high stakes. 
 
 Mrs. Lyall, however, was not doomed to remain 
 long in the bliss of ignorance. Her own observa- 
 tion soon convinced her of her son's extravagance, 
 because, as she remarked, " I had for too many 
 years been accustomed to see how far the whole
 
 266 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 of my dear husband's income would go not to see 
 when Eichard must be exceeding his part of it." 
 The first corroboration she received originated in a 
 letter from a tenant of the estate, to the effect 
 that some lawyer, whose name he did not know, 
 had written to ask him the name of the party to 
 whom he paid his rent, and what signature his 
 receipts for rent usually bore. 
 
 This letter Mrs. Lyall referred to her attorney, 
 and was soon alarmed with an opinion that her 
 son must be raising money on the security of his 
 estate ! Judge, therefore, of her state of mind 
 when she also heard that her son was in London, 
 living at Long's instead of keeping term at 
 Oxford. 
 
 " That very morning," said the anxious mother 
 while asking my advice about her son's affairs, " I 
 put myself in the Lincoln mail, and set off for 
 London, without any more luggage than I could 
 carry in my muff. It was a dark night in February, 
 and about nine o'clock, when I drove up in a 
 hackney coach to the door of Long's Hotel. The 
 waiters looked, as much as to say, ' Who can you 
 be, all so bold ? ' when, as heedless as if I were at 
 my own door, for my heart was too full to notice 
 their fine liveries, or to pay them half the respect 
 they would look for from a widow in weeds, un^
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 267 
 
 attended, in a hackney coach, I hastened at once 
 by them into the house, and then turning round 
 to one of them, I said, with a degree of earnestness 
 that must have astonished them, 'I want your 
 master.' 
 
 " They stared, I remember, at so unusual a 
 guest, and did not reply for a moment, but stood 
 looking at each other, when I said : 
 
 " ' I must -see him. I am come on no common 
 errand. I must speak with the master of this 
 house directly.' They seemed startled, as well 
 they might be, by my manner, and in a few 
 minutes the master, or perhaps it was the manager 
 of the hotel, came forward. 
 
 " 'You have a Mr. Lyall staying here, I believe ?' 
 
 "'We have, ma'am. He is not at home just 
 now.' 
 
 " ' Then I must find him I must wait for him 
 till he comes in. You are surprised, I see you 
 are. Look at me, and you must know I can be 
 no one but his mother. Who else but a mother 
 would seek him out in this way ? But it is indeed 
 high time I should.' 
 
 " One of the waiters then said he could ascertain 
 where he was gone. The porter had been sent to 
 secure a box for a party who had dined with 
 him, and that, if I pleased, a message could be
 
 268 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 sent immediately. So I sent the porter with my 
 card. 
 
 " Ah ! poor Eichard. He told his sisters after- 
 wards that when, in the midst of the merriest part 
 of the performance, the box-keeper put into his 
 hand a black-edged card, with c Mrs. Eichmond 
 Lyall, 7, Park Eow, Lincoln,' he was more startled 
 than he had ever been before in his life. He soon 
 returned ; if he had not, I should have gone after 
 him into the theatre. Meanwhile I asked to be 
 shown into my son's room, and soon found myself 
 waiting in his bedroom. There was a fire blazing 
 away, I suppose at about the rate of a shilling an 
 hour, two wax candles were on the dressing table, 
 and so spacious and handsomely furnished was 
 the apartment that, thought I, 'Pretty doings, 
 Eichard, indeed ! your poor father and I never 
 slept in such a chamber all the thirty happy 
 years that we lived together.' 
 
 " Well, when he came he could hardly look at 
 me. What I said to him, poor fellow, I don't 
 know : a great deal you may be very sure ; but I 
 half laugh and half cry now when I think of it. 
 
 " The first thing he plainly uttered was, ' Well, 
 mother, you must have some supper ; yes, and a 
 glass of champagne too, to cheer you up.' But I 
 could not eat I was thoroughly exhausted. At
 
 THE MOTHERS INFLUENCE. 269 
 
 last he talked about my coming up, and said it 
 was so foolish still, he would pay the journey ; 
 but when I spoke of going home, he said he could 
 not leave London he had so many engagements. 
 'Engaged, indeed ! ' I said. 'Would you have told 
 your poor dead father that ? Engaged ! You are 
 engaged to go to gaol, at this rate. Eichard, my 
 child, come you shall. Though weak in body, I 
 am strong in energy. I have not travelled so 
 many miles in my old age for nothing. I will 
 follow you from place to place. I will alarm the 
 whole town by my determination. It is in vain 
 to tell me of engagements.' Well, he soon came 
 to : he saw I was resolved, and felt I had a tie 
 upon him ; and next morning at nine o'clock, he 
 got on the mail, and came home with me, as quiet 
 and obedient as a child." 
 
 " There was evidently some good feeling in 
 Eichard Lyall." So said his mother's solicitor to 
 me three years after this, when, in talking of the 
 sacrifice his mother was obliged to make from her 
 small income to keep her son from gaol (for his 
 liabilities swallowed up more than the value of 
 his own estate), he said, " it is but fair to own, that 
 at the time of his father's death Mr. Lyall would 
 have settled any portion of the property we had 
 chosen to propose."
 
 270 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 How 10,000 could be sunk in about three 
 years, I have no space to tell. College debts, which 
 he estimated at 300/., amounted to 1,200 ! But 
 the last blow of all was this he was tempted to 
 join in bills for two friends, on condition that they 
 should lend their joint names to him. They fled 
 the country, and he was sued for all. The debts 
 were disputed ; but expensive litigation, and such 
 conduct on the part of his first solicitor as 
 rendered it advisable, after three years of legal 
 business, to transfer all the affairs into the hands 
 of a second, swallowed up the whole estate, and 
 left Eichard Lyall with all the remorse of having 
 nearly beggared his widowed mother, unable to 
 take a degree, without employment, and dependent 
 on relations of small means, whose kindness 
 concedes what their prudence would deny. 
 
 This narrative I would particularly recommend 
 to the consideration not only of undergraduates, 
 but of their parents and friends. I have taken 
 the opinion of many members of each university 
 on the subject of college debts ; and the remedies 
 which are suggested are these : 
 
 First of all, no legislation will do the least good. 
 Supposing that all debts contracted, not only by 
 minors, but by those in statu pupillari, were void 
 in law, I appeal to any university man to say
 
 COLLEGE DEBTS, THE REMEDY. 271 
 
 whether they would not be proportionably more 
 binding in honour. Oxford tradesmen, and almost 
 all other tradesmen, give credit on the faith of 
 honour, and not of law. The chief use of the law 
 of debt is to enable a creditor to punish a 
 swindling debtor. It is of very little use against the 
 usual debtor of a thoughtless kind. Certainly very 
 few tradesmen in Oxford would serve a customer if 
 they contemplated the probability of having to 
 sue for payment. The law of debt comes in, 
 when it is used at all, as a mere after-thought, 
 and is very little the basis of credit. Even if it 
 did, to withdraw the protection of law would raise 
 prices, but would not dimmish credit. 
 
 The remedy against college debts is very much 
 in the hands of parents. Let them accustom their 
 sons to the management of money, by giving them 
 an allowance to find clothes, for instance, and 
 pocket-money together, a year or two before 
 college days. 
 
 Again, every father of common sense should 
 take it for granted, not, as is too common, that his 
 son is not in debt at the end of his first term, but 
 rather that he is in debt. Let him then ask his son 
 in an encouraging way to tell him the name of 
 every creditor, however small may be his bill ; for 
 no debt can possibly remain small long : you must
 
 272 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 either pay or increase it. Let this be repeated at 
 the end of every succeeding term, and the public 
 will soon cease to be shocked by accounts of 
 college extravagance. 
 
 Every undergraduate should have a fixed allow- 
 ance. Battels should be paid separately by the 
 parents, as also may books, clothes, and wine, so 
 that the calculation may be the more easy. 
 Vigilance on the part of the parent, however, and 
 my system of prevention, will still be requisite, 
 because when young men feel they have outrun, 
 they will not, without the exercise of some tact 
 and encouragement, bring all their bills home. 
 
 And lastly, a parent had better either make his 
 son an allowance sufficient to enable him to keep 
 the society to which he expects him to aspire, or 
 else he should keep him away from the university 
 altogether. 230 a year, exclusive of private 
 tutors, if required, furniture, Caution money, and 
 fees at entrance and degree, is the smallest sum 1 
 would recommend at any college ; even 300 a 
 year may be spent without extravagance. This, 
 however, will not admit of any expenditure for 
 horses except a ride, on an average, about once a 
 week. A man of experience might keep a horse 
 on 300 a year, but I would not advise any 
 undergraduate to attempt it ; for it is difficult to
 
 THE EFFECTS OF COLLEGE DEBTS. 273 
 
 prevent the society of riding-men leading to 
 greater expenses in many other respects besides 
 horse hire. 
 
 By these hints I hope that many a parent may 
 greatly profit, and that most of the advantages 
 of either Oxford or Cambridge may be secured, 
 while most of the temptations may be avoided. 
 
 One word more on this subject. To show how 
 men exhaust the kindness of their friends and work 
 their own downfall, I must not forget the case of 
 Lipsley : he had tried his father so hard by bills 
 which followed him home after his degree, that the 
 old gentleman declared he should accept the first 
 lucrative appointment which offered. Accordingly, 
 Lipsley soon found himself in the counting-house 
 of his uncle, a rich merchant in the City. The 
 thoughts of London life pleased him much : he 
 became a member of the University Club ; returned 
 from business early in the afternoon, and led the 
 life of a dashing west-end man. Of all persons in 
 the world a City merchant is the least likely to be 
 indulgent to folly of this kind. That his nephew 
 should be squandering in a week more money than 
 he could earn in a year, and that too among a set 
 of reckless scamps who seemed to be trying who 
 could ruin himself the fastest ; that he should show 
 the utmost indifference to the prospect of that 
 VOL. i. 18
 
 274 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 advancement in the substantial house of Messrs. 
 Catcham and Keepham, which more than one 
 faithful servant would leap with joy at the very 
 thoughts of, this, he might be sure, was beyond the 
 patience of the man of business. Accordingly, 
 after about two years, in the course of which 
 Lipsley's father died, not in very flourishing cir- 
 cumstances, Lipsley found himself literally ordered, 
 without his choice being in any way consulted, to 
 prepare for taking up his abode in Jamaica : his 
 employment was to look after an estate, and deal 
 with negroes. 
 
 This order took Lipsley quite by surprise : the 
 veil began to fall away from his eyes : he saw 
 life in a new aspect. " Where is the good of 
 being a gentleman ? " he naturally thought, " if a 
 man must submit to such work as this ! Why 
 at college every one spoke of forced attendance at 
 chapel and lecture, and a pluck which, at worst, 
 only involved a few months' more reading, as hard- 
 ships peculiar to the place. Did not every man 
 speak of being his own master from the moment he 
 had taken his degree ? Instead of that, I'll declare 
 that positively I have never had my liberty half as 
 much since ; and, instead of impositions and plucks, 
 and being confined to gates, here is, without a joke, 
 a choice between the Union on the one hand, and
 
 THE EFFECTS OF COLLEGE DEBTS. 275 
 
 the gaol on the other. Talk of college punish- 
 ments and restraints, indeed ! Why my uncle is 
 four times as bad as any tutor, for, instead of two 
 hours in a lecture room, he gives six or seven 
 hours in an office ; and writing and arithmetic, in- 
 stead of Latin and Greek ; and because I could not 
 stand it, instead of rusticating here, I am positively 
 transported ! " 
 
 Another friend, in similar perplexity, a short 
 time since, asked my advice : our deliberation is 
 worth repeating, because it will probably repre- 
 sent that of poor Lipsley and many others. 
 
 " I have not," said Fred Wood, " one shilling 
 left ; my mother cannot keep me any longer. She is 
 likely to die soon, then an annuity of 30 a year is 
 all I shall have. What would you advise ? I 
 must do something." 
 
 " Have you spent all your property in expect- 
 ancy as well as in possession ? " 
 
 " Yes ; what the bill brokers disgorged the law- 
 yers intercepted, so all is gone. My Oxford debts 
 and liabilities have swallowed up everv farthing. 
 
 j. v 
 
 All my friends can do for me they have done 
 already. And I have not taken my degree." 
 
 " Then you must read for your degree at once ; 
 you can, I know, be assisted with cash enough for 
 that." 
 
 18*
 
 276 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 " Oh ! that is insufferable. Any thing but that : 
 reading is my abhorrence. Do not waste breath 
 about the matter : only tell me how I can keep my- 
 self as a gentleman in any other way. A place 
 under government " 
 
 " That is trifling to speak of. You have no in- 
 terest. What though you knew , the son of 
 
 the minister ? his father would not listen to his re- 
 presentations in behalf of a college friend who, had 
 he conducted himself so as to be really eligible, 
 would not want assistance. Besides, with these 
 men, who moved in a sphere above what you were 
 entitled to even at Oxford, when out of sight 
 you are out of mind. A hundred of his old school- 
 fellows, at least, have addressed him for his 
 interest." 
 
 " What do you say to an office ? " 
 
 " I have considered that matter for a friend 
 already. You do not write well enough ; be- 
 sides, every grocer's son is better qualified for a 
 clerk : a guinea a week is more than you could 
 command." 
 
 " Now I'll tell you ; when a man is hard up he 
 must not be particular. I believe I shall be 
 obliged to work a coach. I could get two or three 
 pounds a week that way." 
 
 Fred Wood had weak lungs, and was by no
 
 DRIVEN TO EXTREMITIES. 277 
 
 means strong in any respect ; it was easy therefore 
 to cut off this shameful corner of refuge. 
 
 " Then," said he, " what am I to do ? There 
 must be something." 
 
 My object was to show him his true position, that 
 he might feel compelled to read for his degree ; I 
 replied therefore, " It is not quite so plain that 
 there must be something. Will you allow that 
 you have no chance in any business yet men- 
 tioned ? " 
 
 " I am afraid I must." 
 
 " Then I will tell you the only prospect before 
 you, unless you take a degree ; remember, I have 
 considered this well before for another friend pre- 
 cisely in your position. I told him what I shall 
 now tell you, and experience proved my words too 
 true. Your only possible chance of living, I will 
 not say as a gentleman, but living at all, out of the 
 Union, is to serve as usher in a school for barely 
 enough to pay for clothes and washing ! " 
 
 " Are you in earnest ? I had rather be a day 
 labourer." 
 
 " Literally you would not have the choice. Few 
 gentlemen have bodily strength ; certainly you 
 have not." 
 
 A similar consultation upon " ways and means " 
 doubtless passed through the mind of the stylish
 
 278 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 and fashionable Fred Wood before he agreed, or 
 rather obeyed the order, to prepare for passing his 
 youth at least, at Jamaica. However, he found, 
 like many others, that they who make themselves 
 beggars cease to be choosers ; and to Jamaica he did 
 go. The last account I heard of him was, that he 
 had married a black woman ! 
 
 This is an " o'er true tale " of plain unvarnished 
 facts. The last circumstance is peculiar ; but the 
 general tenour of the story has nothing extraordinary 
 in it : any man of experience will remember similar 
 instances of misconduct meeting with its most suit- 
 able punishment. 
 
 The history of Fred Wood I particularly commend 
 to the consideration of Oxonians. Believe me, my 
 friends, if you are impatient of college restraints ; if 
 the hardship of being obliged six months in the year 
 to sleep in college, instead of out of it ; to eat a 
 dinner which you do not order, and to receive other 
 supplies, intellectual as well as physical, at the dis- 
 cretion of persons who have no need to ask what is 
 good for you ; if an impending examination seems a 
 burden too great to bear ; if impositions and other 
 kinds of correction are too galling for your dignity 
 why then, allow me to say, that as soon as college 
 days are over, you must seek some purer and more 
 ethereal sphere than this poor planet can afford. For
 
 LITTLE LIBERTY IN LIFE. 279 
 
 without arguing the impossibility of a life of wealth 
 unemployed and yet enjoyed, in luxury without 
 satiety, and other creations of a fancy soaring far 
 from earth, they who have gathered all their wisdom 
 in the haunts of busy men have declared that the 
 older they grew, and the more successful in their 
 several occupations, the more deeply did they 
 become entangled in the meshes of human affairs ; 
 and that so numerous are the ties which every man 
 in active life finds daily winding around him, that 
 even threescore years and ten are enough to make 
 a man at the beck and call of a hundred masters, 
 instead of being his own. 
 
 Nor is this hard to understand. Life without in- 
 terest is mere vegetation ; and this interest, and the 
 exercise of those energies in which life consists, must 
 have objects. Thus, suppose a man takes a friendly 
 interest in those around him, the exercise of benevo- 
 lence will drag him from the country to town, or 
 from town into the country, to fulfil the anxious 
 duties of guardian, executor, or trustee : so the 
 widow, the minor, or the orphan, check his imagined 
 liberty in one way. Justice will still further curtail 
 it in another claiming him as a witness or a jury- 
 man ; or perhaps the office of magistrate will change 
 his liberty into heavy responsibility nearly every 
 day in the week. Then an occasional attack in a
 
 280 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 country paper, or other expression of public 
 opinion, will set him writing all night, and gallop- 
 ing from one neighbourhood to another all day. 
 Again, domestic duties will supply a thousand 
 Lilliputian ties on his liberty ; he may even have to 
 matriculate a son at Oxford, his idleness to contend 
 with, and his bills to pay. 
 
 All this is true, even of a man born to wealth ; 
 of one who has the power, literally, to enter any 
 tradesman's shop, and command his willing services 
 or help himself, for the mere trouble of writing his, 
 name on a slip of paper. If this man is not free, 
 if your fancied liberty and exemption from re- 
 straints as great as those of college is not found 
 here, where will you expect to find it? Surely, 
 nowwhere. The secret of life is this : local and 
 casual circumstances restrain the will, and the will 
 restrains the man. To mark out a course, and 
 follow it to the end, is not the way of this world. 
 When you set out on the voyage of life, you do not 
 know how many tacks you will have to make, how 
 many ports you will be forced to enter, nor how 
 many things may occur at each to alter your 
 destination. How often has a man said to himself, 
 " This is a fine day ; it is a blessing to have my 
 time my own ; I will take the benefit of a walk in 
 the country." He starts ; meets one friend at this
 
 LIBERTY AT COLLEGE. 281 
 
 corner, another at that, and is turned aside to assist 
 at some accident at a third, till the sun goes down, 
 and he finds himself more tired than refreshed, and 
 that, though a gentleman at large, he has been 
 confined to one smoky street the whole of the day. 
 Life is made up of such days ; and many a man, on 
 coming to the end of them, has confessed he has had 
 his way in nothing, and must acknowledge the truth 
 of the line 
 
 " And all is destined which we fancy free." 
 
 But it will be charitable to you, collegians, to 
 say a little more on this subject. I say charitable, 
 because, in Dr. Johnson's maxim, " That no man is 
 happy who does not know himself to be such," to 
 inform you of your happiness at college, will be the 
 same thing as causing it. 
 
 Our conditions are happy by comparison ; and 
 this comparison must be fairly drawn with those 
 which exist not in fancied possibilities, but in 
 acknowledged facts. Let us compare the restraints 
 of a collegian's duties with those of the several 
 professions from which he may be supposed to make 
 a choice when he has taken his degree. 
 
 The profession of a Barrister confines the student 
 to chambers, where he must attend, daily, whether 
 employed or briefless, thrice the number of hours
 
 282 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 his lectures used to require. His studies are less 
 a matter of choice than at Oxford. If he has been 
 accustomed to complain of the hardships of getting 
 up for the schools the details of the mythology, of 
 Pindar, or historical references, and various read- 
 ings of ^schylus, as lessening his enjoyment of 
 the poetry, and all to be forgotten as soon as his 
 examination is over, how will he relish any thing 
 so unintellectual as learning the exact names and 
 numbers of cases and acts of parliament, and 
 whether Thomas James or James Thomas was the 
 plaintiff or defendant in a particular action ? for 
 such dry and mechanical exercise of our faculties 
 will be required even in the noble science of juris- 
 prudence. He must observe term-time at Lincoln's 
 Inn with even greater punctuality than at Oxford. 
 Missing chambers will be visited with consequences 
 more to be dreaded than the penalties of missing 
 lecture. 
 
 What, again, will be your independence in the 
 Church ? The very look and gestures of a clergy- 
 man are under some kind of restraint. As to hunt- 
 ing, shooting, cricket, fishing, I do not say that 
 they must be resigned for ever, but I say that nine- 
 teen men out of twenty, however little they 
 expected it, find that these amusements are either 
 out of place or out of reach. Two sermons
 
 LIFE AND COLLEGE LIFE COMPARED. 283 
 
 weekly to compose, with pastoral duties and the 
 consequent liability to interruption any hour in 
 the day, lay upon you restraints, as my friend 
 John Corbett will tell you, which you would be 
 glad to compound for by attending two lectures 
 a day. 
 
 If you practise as a Physician, in addition to 
 study among all the nuisances of a dissecting- 
 room Oh ! how ill exchanged for the purity of 
 college lectures and the privileges of college chapel 
 you live in this dilemma if you have much 
 employment, you are the servant of the public ; if 
 you have little, you are cramped by poverty. The 
 man who draws his subsistence from a single spot 
 is as much tied to that spot as the child is to his 
 father's home. 
 
 This comparison, though carried far enough for 
 the present purpose, might be made far more 
 favourable to my views of the independence of 
 college life. Does society and free intercourse 
 with congenial spirits form no part of indepen- 
 dence ? If there is one thing more than another 
 on which a young man calculates with implicit 
 confidence, it is that, being born and bred a gentle- 
 man, he shall command the society of gentlemen to 
 the end of his days. 
 
 Probably he may command such society where
 
 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 it is to be found ; and certainly, of all external 
 resources and means of happiness, intercourse with 
 those of a congenial spirit is the greatest. Gentle- 
 men are thick enough at Oxford. When I look 
 back to my college days, I have a vision of a city 
 in which one enquires in vain for those who walk 
 about in dirty clothes, aprons, and their shirt 
 sleeves, six days out of seven. The lower orders, 
 seen in the High Street at noon-day, are here and 
 there a college servant, a pastrycook's boy with 
 his tray, or perhaps a well-dressed tradesman or 
 his messenger with goods. Caps and gowns seem 
 the costume of the people of Oxford : when they 
 are gone you see no one, but the whole city 
 reminds me of a rookery after shooting. 
 
 In term time, Oxford is a city of gentlemen of 
 those, at least, who are wholly employed in liberal 
 pursuits, and in all that tends to spiritualise 
 the man, and to sublimate and divest him 
 of the grosser part of his nature. This is the 
 ostensible purpose for which they meet together. 
 As to any provision for eating and drinking, 
 or the money-making cares which doom most 
 men to spend more hours in a smoky office than 
 in a drawing room these things ore out of 
 sight and out of mind. In short, Oxonians seem 
 a privileged class. They are exempt from all
 
 LIFE AND COLLEGE LIFE COMPARED. 285 
 
 kinds of labour which would cause them to receive 
 money ; their sole business with it is to pay 
 money gratuitously supplied and imported for 
 the purpose, such as Oxford in 1832-6. 
 
 Oxford, therefore, is a community of gentlemen ; 
 but they are few and far between in the country. 
 Where, then, is your fancied independence, if you 
 are not free to live among your equals ? Many a 
 country clergyman has not one within miles of 
 him. 
 
 " The army," said a man of fifty years of age, 
 " is slavery to me : here have I been in a manu- 
 facturing town recruiting, without scarcely a 
 gentleman to speak to for three months together, 
 and now I am ordered out to Canada. See what 
 I pay for liberty to leave school early, and to 
 figure in every ball room in the country, and 
 see the world, instead of fagging at college. 
 At fifty years of age I am not at liberty to be 
 quiet!" 
 
 " I have scarcely had leisure to look in a Latin 
 or Greek book since I left college," said a writer 
 in the East India Company's service. " The 
 Oriental languages repay you far less for studying 
 them. I have leave to be absent three years, and 
 then I must return for twelve more. Sometimes I 
 have been sent up the country, and have not had
 
 286 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 any one to speak to but the natives for several 
 months ! " 
 
 There is independence for you ! 
 
 There are restraints at college, I allow ; but, 
 compared with the restraints of this busy world, 
 they are as silken bands to adamantine fetters. 
 Many a man has found, like Prometheus in 
 ^Eschylus, that the consequence of taking a hearty 
 interest in the affairs of mortals, which every pro- 
 fession involves, is to be shackled, as it were, hand 
 and foot, to some ungenial clime far from the 
 haunts of men. 
 
 Give full weight to these reflection, collegians, 
 and you will feel your yoke sit easy on you. 
 Dream not, at all events, of greater independence 
 than you now enjoy, should you live to the age of 
 a hundred. The truth is, that happiness consists 
 in the exercise of energies which would lie dormant 
 for ever if we were allowed to choose, and change, 
 and choose again. Providence has determined that 
 most men shall be limited to a single choice, and 
 that by that they shall be bound to abide. Of all 
 new things, new employments and a new sphere of 
 action is the least likely to fit comfortably at first ; 
 but the power of adaptation is in ourselves. Each 
 bears within him a principle of self-adjustment. 
 The rough points which grate and fret us wear
 
 SUITING YOURSELF TO CIRCUMSTANCES. 287 
 
 smooth by time ; nor is there any independence so 
 delightful to a noble mind as that which is felt in 
 1 struggling with misfortunes, mastering difficulties, 
 and defeating, by the pliancy and versatility of our 
 nature, the capricious demands of an imperious 
 fortune.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PROCTOES AND ADVENTURES VARIOUS. 
 
 Bur to revert to the story of our examinations. 
 Logic was the usual difficulty ; few attempted 
 this without a coach. Kett, of Trinity, known 
 from the length of his visage as Horse Kett, 
 published a treatise to make this easier. Kett 
 had also preached the Bampton Lectures, and 
 contested the professorship of poetry with Harding 
 of Magdalen. 
 
 Kett wrote "Logic made Easy," unmercifully 
 cut up by Copleston, whose critique, punning on 
 Kett's equine countenance, was headed with the 
 following lines, showing more wit than good 
 taste : 
 
 ' Aut haec in nostros fabricate est machina muros, 
 Aut aliquis patet error : Equo ne credite Teucri." 
 
 As to apt quotations, when White, of Pembroke, 
 who afterwards wrote "Nights at Mess," in 
 Blackwood, competed for the Newdigate Prize for 
 English verse, Crowe was an examiner of the
 
 FACETIAE CLASSICS. 289 
 
 compositions, so White chose for the motto which 
 was required to conceal the name of each candi- 
 date, Nil desperandum auspice Teu-cro. 
 
 Roundell Palmer's motto for the Ireland, I 
 heard, was an apt one, Grceculus esuriens. 
 
 When Dr. Hodson examined Sir E. Peel for his 
 first class, he said, " My fellow-examiners accused 
 me of flattering him or of putting a pun into his 
 mouth when I selected, for his vivd voce constru- 
 ing, the passage in Virgil : 
 
 " ' Referes ergo hoc et nuntius ibis 
 PeZidse genitori.'" 
 
 " Dr. Tatham," said Cox, " I heard preach his 
 two-hours-and-a-half sermon on the genuineness 
 of the disputed verse in St. John's First Epistle. 
 He ended his sermon in these words, ' I leave the 
 subject to be followed up by the " learned " bench 
 of Bishops, who have little to do and do not 
 always do that little.' ' 
 
 In 1842 there was no Latin prize poem good 
 enough to claim the prize, and about the same 
 time no candidate for honours good enough for 
 the first class. The judgment of the examiners 
 was disputed. Mr. Mitchell observed to me that 
 not one of the examiners could know the standard, 
 because, by a great mistake, all four had been 
 VOL. i. ' 19
 
 290 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 changed at the same time, so no one experienced 
 examiner remained among them. 
 
 "When I was proctor," said my friend Dr. 
 Bloxam, who has survived all his contemporary 
 Demies at Magdalen but one only, " I stopped one 
 of the forbidden tandems and found the driver 
 was a Fellow, and therefore independent of my 
 authority." Probably it was the same man of 
 whom Mr. Bedell Cox says that he called his 
 leader Xerxes and his wheeler Artaxerxes. Being 
 asked Why ? " Our tutor," he replied, " used to 
 tell us that Aristotle's Metaphysics were so called 
 because they came after (/xera) physics ; so my 
 leader being named, when I bought him, Xerxes, 
 I named the wheeler J.rter-Xerxes, or more 
 elegantly Artaxerxes." 
 
 Another proctor, annoyed at the bad example 
 of tandem driving of this man's set, quoted 
 Quousque tandem abutere patientid nostrd ? But 
 this sporting fellow died from an upset, I will 
 not say to the relief of the man in office. Any 
 other proctor seen on Magdalen Bridge was said 
 to stand there ad cap-tandum another tandem 
 pun. 
 
 At the Michaelmas Examination, 1832, a blind 
 man was in the second class. The examiner read 
 the passages and he gave the English. Lord
 
 A SILLY FELLOW EXPOSED. 291 
 
 Grenville, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, sent him a 
 present of twenty-pounds to select books, as prize. 
 This was a Mr. Seymer, of St. Alban Hall ; he 
 was educated where I and Matthew James 
 Higgins, " Jacob Omnium," began our education 
 the school, a little later, of Bartle Frere, one of 
 King Edward VI. 's schools at Bath, now a mere 
 English school of the commercial kind. "We 
 used," said Short, "to see Mr. Seymer and his 
 sister, like Siamese Twins, walking about " 
 neither without the other. She was devoted to 
 her brother, and qualified to read Latin and Greek 
 to him. He saw only by her eyes. I knew also 
 a great Greek scholar at Bath, Mr. Hugh S. Boyd, 
 who delighted in Greek which his daughter had 
 learnt to read to him. 
 
 Graham, of Wadham, in 1833, won the Newdi- 
 gate Prize for his "Granada." Many preferred 
 his "Staffa," the poem for the year before, to 
 Eoundell Palmer's, which won the prize. Black- 
 wood published it, and it may be found in some 
 number of that Magazine of that year. 
 
 Graham was a real poet, but he died too young 
 for his fame. A silly fellow of Worcester College 
 offered to purchase of him any poem he chose to 
 write, on a promise not to claim the authorship. 
 This was done, and the promise kept in one sense, 
 
 19*
 
 292 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 but not in another. Graham wrote " A Legend 
 of Fair Spirits." I think this, or something like 
 it, was the title, and wrote his very best in his own 
 unequalled style. The vain and silly would-be 
 poet was only laughed at. The poem needed no 
 name, already stamped as Graham's. 
 
 It had long seemed strange to me that I could 
 have associated with Dr. Arnold's Eugbeians from 
 1832-6 without the least hint that the doctor was 
 distinguished from the masters of the other public 
 schools. Mr. Mitchell, who, with the Hon. H. 
 Lyttelton, was examined before the Commission 
 after the letters of " Pater Familias," by Jacob 
 Omnium, in the " Pall Mall," had made a stir- 
 being asked as to the moral influence of the head 
 master of Eton, said in effect that as to any moral 
 influence the only conductor of which he knew 
 was the birch ! Next to Dr. Keate, the impression 
 I received was that this was as true of Dr. Arnold 
 as of any other head master. A tale of severity 
 ventilated, as before related, by the Press, and the 
 lamentation of my friend Glazebrook, of Worces- 
 ter, who was unjustly and severely flogged by the 
 Doctor and the blame of the mistake afterwards 
 laid on another master, all deepened this im- 
 pression. If Boswell was the making of Johnson, 
 Stanley was the making of Arnold. A friend in
 
 A FATAL AFFAIR AT COLLEGE. 293 
 
 a position to know Eugby well in that day says 
 that he and I are not singular in that opinion. 
 " There were shades as well as lights in Arnold's 
 character ; Stanley leaves out the shades." 
 Stanley never was the boy in his life ; Arnold 
 took a remarkable interest in him, and Arnold 
 has represented his master as being generally to 
 others what he seemed specially to him. 
 
 When first I went to Oxford there was much 
 excitement from a fatal accident during some 
 boisterous frolic in Christchurch. Lord Conyers 
 Osborne, second son of the Duke of Leeds, died 
 at midnight from a blow, really accidental, from 
 the hand of Lord Hillsborough. Wilson came 
 into my room full of the particulars of the story 
 just heard from the foreman of the inquest which 
 Bedell Cox had held on the body. Lord Hills- 
 borough gave this evidence, says Cox, " About 
 eleven o'clock, on the 16th February, I was 
 running riotously about Pickwater Quad, with 
 two or three young companions. The deceased 
 came out of his room, when I, wishing to save 
 him from rough usage, forced him back into his 
 room. A scuffle took place. The deceased, re- 
 senting my interference struck me, and I struck 
 him on the stomach, intending only to force him 
 into his chair. Observing that he sank back and
 
 294 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 vomited, I became alarmed, and rubbing his 
 temples with lavender water, sent for Mr. Hitchins, 
 the surgeon." 
 
 The foreman gave a different account. He 
 believed that Lord Conyers, flipping about with 
 his handkerchief, flipped Hillsborough smartly 
 on the hand, on which he gave a blind back- 
 handed sweep of the arm and unfortunately 
 caught Lord Conyers at the pit of the stomach, 
 between which and the brain there is so vital a 
 connection that a blow may be fatal. Nature has 
 protected that point with a kind of breastwork of 
 muscles which contract at the least consciousness 
 of danger. In the dark this point might have 
 been dangerously unguarded. Lord Hillsborough 
 was noted as a most powerful man and a pugilist. 
 Lord Conyers was a very weak man. Lord Hills- 
 borough had the fame of bargees thrashed at 
 Eton. 
 
 "History repeats itself." Horace Walpole, in 
 his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, writes ; 
 " We have some chance of a Peer's trial that has 
 nothing to do with the Eebellion (of 1745). A 
 servant of a college has been killed at Oxford, 
 and a verdict of ' Wilful murder by persons un- 
 known,' was brought in by the coroner's inquest. 
 Those * persons unknown ' are supposed to be
 
 QUEEN ADELAIDE AT OXFORD. 295 
 
 Lord Abergavenny, Lord Charles Scott, son of 
 the Duke of Buccleugh, and two more, who had 
 played tricks with the poor fellow when he was 
 drunk, and the next morning he was found with 
 his skull fractured at the foot of the first lord's 
 staircase. One pities the poor boys, who, un- 
 doubtedly, did not foresee the melancholy event 
 of the ' sport ' ! " 
 
 How " sport " and " wilful murder " could be 
 reconciled otherwise than by allowing the said 
 boys to , remain " unknown " possible in those 
 days but not in ours Horace Walpole does not 
 say. 
 
 Queen Adelaide, in the October term of 1833, 
 paid a long visit to Oxford long, that is, com- 
 pared with other royal visits which usually had 
 been flying ones. Dean Gaisford was not deemed 
 very courteous, and it was, whether truly or 
 falsely, attributed to indifference on his part that 
 instead of being received in Christchurch she took 
 up her abode at the Angel Inn, then opposite 
 Queen's College, where she " showed herself " 
 as she seemed to be admiring the view of the 
 High Street from her balcony. She also gave 
 receptions in the coffee room, prepared for the 
 purpose, a fine long room which, before the days 
 of spacious Company Hotels, I thought quite a
 
 296 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 grand saloon : a few laurels on laths were fixed to 
 the walls of the entrance. I noticed no more. 
 People had no idea of the floral decorations of 
 these days, for even Hyde Park, Eotten Eow and 
 Kensington Gardens presented little more than 
 the appearance of cowfields fifty years since. All 
 our present display of floral taste dates from 
 Paxton's Great Exhibition in 1851. 
 
 The Queen had, of course, a reception in the 
 Theatre : and the honour of D.C.L. Doctor of Civil 
 Laws Law, I suppose, being considered a mere 
 matter of formal inoculation was conferred on four 
 of her train. Then the City claimed her attention, 
 with presentations at the Town Hall. And in the 
 evening, strange to say, Her Majesty, instead of 
 being herself entertained, gave a splendid dinner to 
 the Chancellor and other dignitaries and concluded 
 with holding a "Drawing-room" at the Angel Hotel. 
 Next day, after a walk round Christ Church meadow 
 and lionising, she came to Queen's College, especially 
 under the patronage of Queens Consort ever since 
 Queen Philippa's time. At a dejeuner in the Hall 
 " the Queen's horn " was handed round with some 
 college ale with the remark "They had been 
 brewers five hundred years." The Queen playfully 
 but graciously said she would " smell to it," and, 
 passed it on. There were illuminations in the
 
 OXFORD OPPOSES THE RAILWAYS. 297 
 
 evening. Next day, she ended, as was said, these 
 truly " angel visits," which had heretofore been 
 " few and far between." 
 
 The Prince of Wales in 1859 came up to keep 
 his first term at Oxford, being regularly matricu- 
 lated as a member of Christ Church, though 
 living with his " Governor," Colonel Bruce, in a 
 house, especially taken and prepared for him, 
 called " Frewen Hall," formerly the residence of 
 Dr. Frewen, of Christ Church. On the Prince's 
 arrival he was waited on by the Vice-Chancellor, 
 and Proctors in full procession. Some of my 
 friends joined his card and chess parties, and as 
 Bedell Cox relates " During the five or six terms 
 of his residence the young Prince reaped golden 
 opinions by his easy and unaffected bearing, and 
 took with him at his departure the loyal good 
 wishes of all Oxford University and City. 
 
 That the University should ever have petitioned 
 against the Didcot Railway in 1838 could hardly 
 be believed in these times. The reasons given were 
 three, each more absurd than the next preceding : 
 
 1. That the existing means of communication were sufficient. 
 
 2. That greater facilities of communication would be injurious to 
 the discipline of the University. 
 
 3. That the works adjoining the river would ne cessarily cause 
 floods.
 
 298 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 I remember Sir Eobert Inglis examining Mr. 
 Slatter, the bookseller, in committee, and asking 
 him ironically whether the same rail that brought 
 the young men would not also bring their mothers, 
 aunts and sisters, and whether that would be an 
 improvement. Eton College withdrew its opposi- 
 tion on a stipulation that there should be no 
 station or building at Slough, nor was there at 
 first ; people were taken up and put down never- 
 theless, by the road side. After this evasion, the 
 prohibition was waived. 
 
 There have been more than one instance of un- 
 popular proctors, and one was actually obliged to 
 give way to the clamour of the gallery at one com- 
 memoration. The same repulsive greeting was 
 intended for Mr. Dyer, of Trinity, on the occasion 
 of the installation of the Duke of Wellington. But 
 the dons had an intimation of this, and in conse- 
 quence we were on that occasion admitted by 
 tickets, which were only given on a clear under- 
 standing of good behaviour. Mr. Short said when 
 he gave me my ticket, if any disturbance were 
 attempted the Vice-Chancellor would dissolve the 
 meeting, and we should have the disgrace of dis- 
 appointing the ladies and foiling a celebration in 
 honour of the first man of the day. 
 
 Proctors are " not unpopular because they do
 
 A PROCTOR MOBBED. 299 
 
 their duty, but only from the manner of doing it. 
 University men, the class which prevailed in my 
 time, were very easy to deal with if you spoke to 
 them as gentlemen and treated them as such. At 
 one time it was agreed to follow Mr. Dyer when he 
 was going on his proctorial rounds, in cap and 
 gown, and walking arm-in-arm, but at the same 
 time with much affected decorum, so that no ex- 
 ception could be taken to the practice. This train 
 of followers became longer and longer vires 
 accrescet eundo and soon the rabble began to join 
 on ; and such ragamuffins as are turned out from 
 Jericho or St. Giles' came in crowds, which 
 became really formidable to all decent citizens so, 
 serious measures were taken to stop it, especially 
 because those were excited times : the mob was 
 ever rising in the manufacturing districts, and there 
 was even a fear lest the soldiers should refuse to 
 act against a mob which raised the popular cry of 
 Eeform. A little remonstrance by the dons of the 
 separate colleges and a request not to go out of 
 college for some nights put an end to what was 
 becoming a nuisance and a danger. 
 
 The state of Oxford in the middle of the last 
 century is sketched by Smollett in "Peregrine 
 Pickle." 
 
 "Preparations were now made for Peregrine's
 
 300 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 departure for the University. He was now seven- 
 teen years of age, and was to be accompanied by 
 the same attendants he had at Winchester. His 
 uncle laid strong injunctions on him, first to avoid 
 the company of immodest women ; secondly, to 
 mind his learning ; and thirdly, to write to him as 
 often as he could find time. His allowance was 
 500 a year, including 100 a year for the salary 
 of Mr. Jolter, his governor. 
 
 " Peregrine's heart dilated at the prospect of so 
 much money all at his own command, so reveries 
 the most agreeable diversified the two days' travel- 
 ling of those slow days between Winchester and 
 Oxford. Here he was introduced to the head of 
 his college, and entered as a Gentleman Com- 
 moner, with a genteel set of rooms and a judicious 
 tutor. But Peregrine Pickle soon began to think 
 he knew quite enough of Greek and Latin for his 
 purposes, so, bent on pleasure, he renewed his 
 acquaintance with some old schoolfellows, by 
 whom he was soon initiated in all the fashionable 
 diversions of the place. 
 
 " As Peregrine was a lad of wit and humour, the 
 Bucks of the University soon admitted him as a 
 member of their set, in which ere long he became 
 a leading character ; not that he prided himself 
 like them on smoking the most pipes and drinking
 
 OXFORD IN SMOLLETT'S DAY. 301 
 
 the most ale, for this was far too gross for his 
 refined ambition. He prided himself rather on 
 his talent for raillery, for his personal accomplish- 
 ments and taste. He now was eager for a wider 
 sphere of action ; his excursions were not con- 
 fined to the small villages around, which were 
 cemmonly visited once a week by the students for 
 the sake " suffice it to say, like Jericho and St. 
 Clement's of later days. " He kept his own horses, 
 attended all the races within fifty miles, and made 
 frequent jaunts to London, where he used to lie 
 incog, during the best part of many a term. 
 
 " As to the rules of the University, they were too 
 severe for his vivacity, so he sometimes became 
 acquainted with the Proctors, but no matter, he 
 readily paid their fines, the usual ' imposition ' of 
 those days, and still continued to frequent taverns, 
 and committed midnight frolics, nor did the more 
 steady of his fellow students or even the tutors 
 themselves escape free from his ridicule and law- 
 less licence. 
 
 " Mr. Jolter was shocked at this, and soon tried 
 to wean his pupil from such wild courses by 
 diverting him to more laudable pursuits, and 
 therefore he caused Peregrine to be introduced to 
 what was the c Union ' of the day a club of 
 Politicians, who, with schemes for the reformation
 
 302 OXFORD MEMORIES. 
 
 of the State, proved too apt to drown their 
 patriotism in deep libations. But Peregrine could 
 not approve either of their principles or their 
 practices, and observing the extent to which they 
 carried their political orgies, he laid a mischievous 
 snare to take advantage of their weakness, and to 
 show his disgust for their absurdities. In one $f 
 their nocturnal deliberations he promoted such a 
 spirit of good-fellowship by wit levelled at their 
 adversaries, that at last he found them ready to join 
 in the most extravagant proposals that could be 
 made in the name of good-fellowship and politics. 
 " At his suggestion they drank toasts the most 
 uproarious, and then broke as they emptied every 
 man his glass, and then proposed healths out 
 of their shoes, caps and bottoms of the candle- 
 sticks ; then, suiting the madness of their actions 
 to the insanity of their vociferations, some of them 
 would stand with a foot on a chair and knee on 
 the table, and at last rivalled each other in sitting, 
 in honour of one patriotic toast more, with their 
 bare posteriors on the cold floor. Next they 
 burnt their shoes, their caps and periwigs, and in 
 this trim Peregrine led them forth into the street 
 ready to compel every one they met to subscribe to 
 their political creed and pronounce the Shibboleth 
 of their party.
 
 PEREGRINE PICKLE. 303 
 
 "The rows and fights which followed we can 
 easily understand, during which Peregrine, himself 
 sober, slipped away unnoticed to his room." 
 
 As my time at Oxford was nearly a hundred 
 years from that of Mr. Peregrine Pickle, such a 
 specimen of a drunken wine party in college may 
 be supposed to represent a very different, because 
 an earlier, stage of civilisation. Still, as drunken- 
 ness is madness while it lasts, I have heard enough 
 of the doings of some fifty years since the later 
 days of " the three-bottle men " to render such 
 a scene in the days of Smollett quite conceivable. 
 
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