He Matched a Trick of the Devil
THREE CLASSICAL PUNS:
Like the more celebrated scholars and divines, Clarke, Paley, Markland, &c., he would join an evening party at cards, always preferring the old English game of whist, and resolutely adhering to his early determination of never playing for more than a nominal stake. Being once, however, induced to break through it, and play with the late learned Bishop of Llandaff, Dr. Watson, for a shilling, which he won, after pushing it carefully to the bottom of his pocket and placing his hand upon it, with a kind of mock solemnity, he said, “There, my lord Bishop, this is a trick of the devil; but I’ll match him; so now, if you please, we will play for a penny,” and this was ever after the amount of his stake, though he was not the less ardent in pursuit of success, or less joyous on winning his rubber. Like our great moralist, Johnson, he had an aversion to punning, saying, it exposed the poverty of a language. Yet he perpetrated the following One day reaching a book from a shelf in his library, two others came tumbling down, including a volume of Hume, upon which fell a critical work of Lambert Bos: “See what has happened,” exclaimed the Doctor, “procumbit humi bos.” At another time, too strong a current of air being let into the room where he was sitting, suffering under the effects of a slight cold, “Stop! stop!” said he, “this is too much; at present I am only par levibus ventis.” When he was solicited to subscribe to Dr. Busby’s translation of Lucretius, published at a high price, he declined doing so, by observing, at the proposed cost it would indeed be “Lucretius carus.”
HIS LAW ACT AT CAMBRIDGE
On proceeding to the degree of LL.D. at Cambridge, in 1781, Dr. Parr delivered “in the law schools, before crowded audiences,” says Field, “two theses, of which the subject of the first was, Hæres ex delicto defuncti non tenetur; and of the second, Jus interpretandi leges privatis, perinde ac principi, constat. In the former of these, after having offered a tribute of due respect to the memory of the late Hon. Charles Yorke (the Lord Chancellor,) he strenuously opposed the doctrine of that celebrated lawyer, laid down in his book upon ‘the law of forfeiture;’ and denied the authority of those passages which were quoted from the correspondence of Cicero and Brutus; because, as he affirmed, after that learned and sagacious (Cambridge) critic, Markland (in his Remarks on the Epistles of those two Romans,) the correspondence itself is not genuine. The same liberal and enlightened views of the natural and social rights of man pervaded the latter as well as the former thesis; and in both were displayed such strength of reasoning and power of language, such accurate knowledge of historical facts and such clear comprehension of legal principles bearing on the questions, that the whole audience listened with fixed and delighted attention. The Professor of Law himself, Dr. Hallifax, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, was so struck with the uncommon excellence of these compositions, as to make it his particular request that they should be given to the public; but with which request Dr. Parr could not be persuaded to comply.
“THERE IS A PLEASANT STORY
AN ACT KEPT BY DR. MILNER,
Reported of the Doctor,” says Barker, in his Parriana, when on a visit to Dr. Farmer, at Emanuel Lodge. He had made free in discourse with some of the Fellow Commoners in the Combination-room, who, not being able to cope with him, resolved to take vengeance in their own way; they took his best wig, and thrust it into his boot: this indispensable appendage of dress was soon called for, but could nowhere be found, till the Doctor, preparing for his departure, and proceeding, to put on his boots, found one of them pre-occupied, and putting in his hand, drew forth the wig, with a loud shout—perhaps ευρηκα.” “When the late Dr. Watson,” adds the same writer, “presided in the divinity-schools, at The reputation of whose great learning and ability caused the place to be filled with the senior and junior members of the University, one of the opponents was the late Dr. Coulthurst, and the debate was carried on with great vigour and spirit. When this opponent had gone through his arguments, the Professor rose, as usual, from his throne, and, taking off his cap, cried out—
‘Arcades ambo
Et cantare pares, et respondere parati.’
We juniors, who happened to be present, were much pleased with the application. Soon after, being in the Doctor’s company, I mentioned how much we were entertained with the whole scene, particularly with the close: he smiled, and said, ‘It is Warburton’s,’ where I soon after found it.”
EPIGRAM
On a Cambridge beauty, daughter of an Alderman, made by the Rev. Hans De Veil, son of Sir Thomas de Veil, and a Cantab:—
“Is Molly Fowle immortal?—No.
Yes, but she is—I’ll prove her so:
She’s fifteen now, and was, I know,
Fifteen full fifteen years ago.”
NOVEL REVENGE
Sir John Heathcote, a Cantab, and lessee of Lincoln church, being refused a renewal of the same on his own terms, by the Prebend, Dr. Cobden, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, upon accepting the Prebend’s terms, appointed his late Majesty, then Prince of Wales, to be one of the lives included in the lease, observing, “I will nominate one for whom the dog shall be obliged to pray in the daytime, wishing him dead at night.”
THEY TAKE THEM AS THEY COME
THE DARLING SON OF HIS MOTHER,
MISCALCULATING MAMMA,
PRESENTING HIS FAVOURITE SON
A person might very well conclude, from the observations of the enemies of our English Universities, that the governors of them had the power of selecting the youth who are to graduate at them, or that, of necessity, all men bred at either Oxford or Cambridge ought to be alike distinguished for superior virtue and forbearance, great learning, and great talents. They forget, that they must take them as they come, like the boy in the anecdote. “So you are picking them out, my lad,” said a Cantab to a youth, scratching his head in the street. “No,” said the arch-rogue, “I takes ’em as they come.” Just so do the authorities at Oxford and Cambridge. I knew a son of Granta, and eke, too, Whose mind, at twenty, was a chaos, and must from his birth have been, not as Locke would have supposed, a sheet of white paper, ready to receive impressions, but one smeared and useless. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not half so wise as was this scion in his mother’s opinion. She, therefore, brought him to Cambridge, and having introduced him to the amiable tutor of St. John’s College, smirkingly asked him, “If he thought her darling would be senior wrangler?” “I don’t know, madam,” was his reply, in his short quick manner of speaking, pulling up a certain portion of his dress, in the wearing of which he resembled Sir Charles Wetherell, “I don’t know, madam; that remains to be seen.” Poor fellow, he never could get a degree, nor (after having been removed from Cambridge to the Politechnique School at Paris, for a year or two) could he ever get over the Pons Asinorum (as we Cantabs term the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid.) Another And they are sure to miscalculate whenever they inter-meddle with such matters, declined entering her two sons at Cambridge in the same year, that, as she said, “They might not stand in each other’s way.” Id est, they were to be both senior wranglers. They, however, never caught sight of the goal. I recollect, on one occasion, the second son being floored in his college mathematical examination. He was said to have afterwards carried home the paper (containing twenty-two difficult geometrical and other problems,) when one of his sisters snatched it out of his hand, exclaiming, “Give it to me,” and, without the slightest hesitation (in good Cambridge phrase,) she “floored” the whole of them, to his dismay. This lady was one of a bevy of ten beauties whom their mamma compassionately brought to Cambridge to dance with the young gentlemen of the University at her parties, and after so officiating for some three or four years, notwithstanding they were all Blues, and had corresponding names, from Britannia to Boadicea, the Cantabs suffered them all to depart spinsters. But Papas also sometimes overrate their sons’ talents and virtues. A gentleman, a few years since, on To the sub-rector of a certain College in Oxford, as a new member, did so with the observation, “Sir, he is modest, diffident, and clever, and will be an example to the whole College.” “I am glad of it,” was the reply, we want such men, and I am honoured, sir, by your bringing him here.” Papa made his exit, well pleased with our Welshman’s hospitality, for of that country our Sub-Rector, as well as the gentleman in question was. The former, too, had been a chaplain in Lord Nelson’s fleet, in his younger days, and was not over orthodox in his language, when irritated, though a man with a better heart it would have puzzled the Grecian sage to have traced out by candle-light. A month had scarcely passed over, when Papa, having occasion to pass through Oxon, called on the Sub-Rector, of course, and naturally inquired, “How his son demeaned himself?” “You told me, sir,” said the Sub-Rector, in a pet, and a speech such as the quarter-deck of a man-of-war had schooled him in; “you told me, sir, that your son was modest, but d—n his modesty! you told me, sir, he was diffident, but d—n his diffidence! you told me, sir, he was clever; he’s the greatest dunce of the whole society! you told me, sir, he would prove an example to the whole college: but I tell you, sir, that he is neither modest, diffident nor clever, and in three weeks,” added the Sub-Rector, raising his voice to a becoming pitch, “he has ruined half the College by his example!” We can scarcely do better than add to this, by way of tail-piece, from that loyal Oxford scourge Terræ Filius (ed. 1726)—(to be read, “cum grano,” and some allowance for the excited character of the times in which it was written)—