Compliments to the Learned of Both Universities
“MALLEUS PAPISTARUM.”
“THE WALKING DICTIONARY.”
DOCTOR SUBTILIS;
“The names which learned men bear for any length of time,” says Dr. Parr, “are generally well founded.” Dr. Chillingworth, for his able and convincing writings in support of the Protestant Church, was styled Dr. Sutherland, the friend and literary associate of Dr. Mead, and others, obtained the soubriquet of John Duns, better known as the celebrated Duns Scotus, who was bred at Merton College, Oxford, and is said to have been buried alive, was called Another Mertonian, named Occam, his successor and opponent, was named
DOCTOR INVINCIBILIS;
PROFOUND
DOCTOR EVANGELICUS
THE WALKING LIBRARY;”
“THE WONDERFUL,”
“THE JUDICIOUS.”
A third was the famous Sir Henry Savile, who had the title of Bestowed upon him: and a fourth of the Society of Merton College, was the celebrated Reformer, John Wickliffe, who was called Wood, says, that Dr. John Reynolds, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, died in 1607, “one of so prodigious a memory, that he might have been called To “see whom,” he adds, “was to command virtue itself.” If Duns Scotus was justly called “the most subtle doctor,” says Parr, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure “the Seraphim,” Aquinas the “Universal and Evangelical,” surely Hooker has with equal, if not superior justice, obtained the name of Bishop Louth, in his preface to his English Grammar, has bestowed the highest praise upon the purity of Hooker’s style. Bishop Warburton, in his book on the Alliance between Church and State, often quotes him, and calls him, “the excellent, the admirable, the best good man of our order.”
JOHN LELAND,
Senior, says Wood, who in the reigns of Henry V. and VI. taught and read in Peckwaters Ynne, while it flourished with grammarians, “was one so well seen in verse and prose, and all sorts of humanity, that he went beyond the learnedest of his age, and was so noted a grammarian, that this verse was made upon him:—
‘Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum;’
Which,” he adds, “with some alteration, was fastened upon John Leland, junior, by Richard Croke, of Cambridge, at what time the said Leland became a Protestant, and thereupon,” observes Wood (as if it were a necessary consequence,) “fell mad:”
‘Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland flos fatuorum.’
Which being replied to by Leland (In Encom. Eruditorum in Anglia, &c. per Jo. Leland’s edit. Lond. 1589,) was answered by a friend of Croke’s in verse also. And here by the way I must let the reader know that it was the fashion of that age (temp. Hen. VIII.) to buffoon, or wit it after that fashion, not only by the younger sort of students, but by bishops and grave doctors. The learned Walter Haddon, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and afterwards President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in an epistle that he wrote to Dr. Cox, Almoner to Edward IV. (afterwards Bishop of Ely) “doth give him great commendations of his actions and employments, and further addeth (in his Lucubrations) that when he was at leisure to recreate his mind, he would, rather than be idle, ‘Scevolæ et Lælii more—aut velitationem illam Croci cum Lelando perridiculam, vel reliquas Oxonienses nugas (ita enim profecto sunt,’ saith he,) ‘evolvere voluerit, &c.’ Dr. Tresham, also, who was many years Commissary or Vice-Chancellor of the University, is said by (Humfredus in Vita Juelli) ‘ludere in re seria, &c.’” When Queen Elizabeth was asked her opinion of the scholarship of the two great cotemporaries, the learned Buchanan and Dr. Walter Haddon, the latter accounted the best writer of Latin of his age, she dexterously avoided the imputation of partiality by replying: “Buchannum omnibus antepono, Haddonum nemini postpono.”
LORD MOUNTJOY
ATTACK THE ERRORS OF LUTHER
Was the friend and cotemporary of Erasmus, at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and was so highly esteemed by that great man, that he called him, “Inter doctos nobilissimus, inter nobiles doctissimus, inter utrosque optimus.” His noble friend once entreated him to “My Lord,” replied the sage, “nothing is more easy than to say Luther is mistaken: nothing more difficult than to prove him so.”
VIR EGREGIE DOCTUS,
Was the soubriquet conferred upon the celebrated Etonian, Cantab, Reformer, Provost of King’s College, and Bishop of Hereford, Dr. Edward Fox, by the learned Bishop Godwin. Another Etonian and Cantab, Dr. Aldrich, Bishop of Carlisle, received from Erasmus, when young, the equally just and elegant compliment of
“BLANDÆ ELOQUENTIÆ JUVENEM.”
A POINT OF ETIQUETTE
Many humorous stories are told of the absurd height to which the observance of etiquette has been carried at both Oxford and Cambridge. In my time, you might meet a good fellow at a wine party, crack your joke with him, hob-nob, &c., but, unless introduced, you would have been stared at with the most vacant wonderment if you attempted to recognise him next day. It is told of men of both universities, that a scholar walking on the banks of the Isis, or Cam, fell into the river, and was in the act of drowning, when another son of Alma-Mater came up, and observing his perilous situation, exclaimed, “What a pity it is I have not the honour of knowing the gentleman, that I might save him!” One version of the story runs, that the said scholars met by accident on the banks of the Nile or Ganges, I forget which, when the catastrophe took place; we may, therefore, very easily imagine the presence of either a crocodile or an alligator to complete the group.
THE VALUE OF A SYLLABLE
“COCKS MAY CROW.”
Wood, in his Annals of Oxford, has the following anecdote of “The masters of olden time at Athens, and afterwards at Oxford, were called Sophi, and the scholars Sophistæ; but the masters taking it in scorn that the scholars should have a larger name than they, called themselves Philosophi,—that is, lovers of science, and so got the advantage of the scholars by one syllable.” Every body has heard of Foote’s celebrated motto for a tailor friend of his, about to sport his coat of arms,—“List, list, O list!” But every body has not heard, probably, though it is noticed in his memoir, extant in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, that the learned Cambridge divine and antiquary, Dr. Cocks Macro, having applied to a Cambridge acquaintance for an appropriate motto to his coat of arms, was pithily answered with Every Cantab remembers and regrets the early death of the accomplished scholar, Charles Skinner Matthews, M. A., late Fellow of Downing College, who was “the familiar” of the present Sir J. C. Hobhouse, and of the late Lord Byron. He was not more accomplished than facetious, nor, according to one of Lord Byron’s letters, more facetious than “beloved.” Speaking of his university freaks, his lordship says, “when Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cambridge, for a row with a tradesman named “Hiron,” Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron’s window every evening—
“Ah me! what perils do environ
The man who meddles with hot Hiron!”
BAND OF PROFANE SCOFFERS
DID NOT THE LESS REVERENCE RELIGION,
He was also of that who, under the auspices of ——, used to rouse Lord Mansel (late Bishop of Bristol) from his slumbers in the Lodge of Trinity (College;) and when he appeared at the window, foaming with wrath, and crying out, “I know you, gentlemen; I know you!” were wont to reply, “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort!—Good Lort deliver us!” (Lort was his Christian name.) And his lordship might have added, the pun was the more poignant, as the Bishop was either a Welshman himself, or had a Welsh sponsor, in the person of the late Greek Professor, Dr. Lort. Punning upon sacred subjects, however, is decidedly in bad taste; yet, in the reign of the Stuarts, neither king nor nobles were above it. Our illustrious Cantab, Bacon, writing to Prince, afterwards Charles the First, in the midst of his disastrous poverty, says, he hopes, “as the father was his Creator, the son will be his Redeemer.” Yet this great man But said, towards the close of his chequered life, that “a little smattering in philosophy would lead a man to Atheism, but a thorough insight into it will lead a man back to a First Cause; and that the first principle of religion is right reason; and seriously professed, all his studies and inquisitions, he durst not die with any other thoughts than those religion taught, as it is professed among the Christians.” These incidents remind me that
THE MEMORY OF JEMMY GORDON,
“Who, to save from rustication,
Crammed the dunce with declamation,”
Is now fast falling into forgetfulness, though there was a time when he was hailed by Granta’s choicest spirits, as one who never failed to “set the table in a roar.” Poor Jemmy! I shall never forget the manner in which he, by one of those straightforward, not-to-be-mistaken flashes of wit, silenced a brow-beating Radical Huntingdon attorney, at a Reform-meeting in Cambridge market-pace. Jemmy was a native of Cambridge, and was the son of a former chapel-clerk of Trinity College, who gave him an excellent classical education, and had him articled to an eminent solicitor, with fine talents and good prospects. But though Jemmy was “a cunning man with a hard head,” such as his profession required, he had a soft heart,—fell in love with a pretty girl. That pretty girl, it is said, returned his passion, then proved faithless, and finally coquetted and ran off with a “gay deceiver,” a fellow-commoner of Trinity College,—optically dazzled, no doubt, with the purple robe and silver lace, for Jemmy was a fine, sensible-looking man. Poor Jemmy! he was too good for the faithless hussy; he took it to heart, as they say, and, unfortunately, took to drinking at the same time. He soon became too unsettled, both in mind and habits, to follow up his profession with advantage, and he became a bon-vivant, a professed wit, with a natural turn for facete, and the cram-man of the more idle sons of Granta, who delighted in his society in those days when his wits were unclouded, nor did the more distinguished members of the university then disdain to hail him to their boards. For many years Jemmy lived to know and prove that “learning is most excellent;” and having a good classical turn, he lived by writing Themes and Declarations for non-reading Cantabs, for each of which Jemmy expected the physician’s mite, and, like them, might be said to thrive by the Guinea Trade. It is, no doubt, true, that some of his productions had college prizes awarded to them, and that, on one occasion, being recommended to apply for the medal, he indignantly answered, “It is no credit to be first in an ass-race!” Notwithstanding, Jemmy’s in-goings never equalled his out-goings, and many a parley had Jemmy with his empty purse. It was no uncommon thing for him to pass his vacations in quod—videlicet jail—for debts his creditors were well aware he could not pay; but they well knew also that his friends, the students, would be sure to pay him out on their return to college. These circumstances give occasion for the publication of the now scarce caricatures of him, entitled, “Term-time,” and “Non-term.” In the first he is represented spouting to one of his togaed customers, in the latter he appears cogitating in “durance vile.” Besides these, numerous portraits of Jemmy have been put forth, for the correctness of most of which we, who have “held our sides at his fair words,” can vouch. A full-length is extant in Hone’s Every-Day Book, in the Gradus ad Catabrigiam is a second; and we doubt not but our friend Mason, of Church-Passage, Cambridge, could furnish a collector with several. Poor Jemmy! he has now been dead several years. His latter days were melancholy indeed. To the last, however, Jemmy continued to sport those distinctive marks of a man of ton, a spying-glass and an opera-hat, which so well became him. Latterly he became troublesome to his best friends, not only levying contributions at will, but by saying hard things to them, sparing neither heads of college, tutors, fellows, students, or others whose names were familiar to him. On one occasion, oblivious with too much devotion to Sir John, as was latterly his wont, his abuse caused him to be committed to the tread-mill—sic transit—and after his term of exercise had expired, meeting a Cantab in the street whose beauty was even less remarkable than his wit, he addressed our recreant with, “Well, Jemmy, how do you like the tread-mill?” “I don’t like your —— ugly face,” was the response. Jemmy’s recorded witticisms were at one time as numberless as the stars, and in the mouth of every son of Granta, bachelor or big-wig; now some only are remembered. He one day met Sir John Mortlock in the streets of Granta, soon after he had been knighted; making a dead pause, and looking Sir John full in the face, Jemmy improvised—
“The king, by merely laying sword on,
Could make a knight of Jemmy Gordon.”
At another time, petitioning a certain college dignitary for a few shillings to recover his clothes, pledged to appease his thirst, he said, on receiving the amount, “Now, I know that my redeemer liveth.”
Jemmy, in his glorious days, had been a good deal patronised by the late Master of Trinity College, Bishop Mansel, like himself a wit of the first water. Jemmy one day called upon the bishop, during the time he filled the office of Vice-Chancellor, to beg half-a-crown. “I will give you as much,” said the Bishop, “if you can bring me a greater rogue than yourself.” Jemmy made his bow and departed, content with the condition, and had scarcely half crossed the great court of Trinity, when he espied the late Mr. B., then one of the Esquire Bedels of the University, scarcely less eccentric than himself. Jemmy coolly told him that the Vice-Chancellor wanted to see him. Into the Lodge went our Bedel, followed close by Jemmy. “Here he is,” said Jemmy, as they entered the Bishop’s presence, arcades ambo, at the same instant. “Who?” inquired the Bishop. “You told me, my Lord,” said Jemmy, “to bring you a greater rogue than myself, and you would give me half-a-crown, and here he is.” The Bishop enjoyed the joke, and gave him the money. A somewhat