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