Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars. Gooch Richard
And eke of wit, mirth, puns, and pleasantry, was the famous Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, the never-to-be-forgotten composer of the good old catch—
“Hark, the merry Christ-Church bells,”
and of another to be sung by four men smoking their pipes, which is not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear. His pipe was his breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a student of Christ Church, at 10 o’clock one night, finding it difficult to persuade a “freshman” of the fact, laid him
A WAGER,
That the Dean was at that instant smoking. Away he hurried to the deanery to decide the controversy, and on gaining admission, apologised for his intrusion by relating the occasion of it. “Well,” replied the Dean, in perfect good humour, with his pipe in his hand, “you see you have lost your wager: for I am not smoking, but filling my pipe.”
GAME IN EVERY BUSH.
Bishop Watson says, in his valuable Chemical Essays, that “Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Bentley met accidentally in London, and on Sir Isaac’s inquiring what philosophical pursuits were carrying on at Cambridge, the doctor replied, “None; for when you are a-hunting, Sir Isaac, you kill all the game; you have left us nothing to pursue.” “Not so,” said the philosopher, “you may start a variety of game in every bush, if you will but take the trouble to beat it.” “And so in truth it is,” adds Dr. W.; “every object in nature affords occasion for philosophical experiment.”
NEWTON’S TOAST.
The Editor of the Literary Panorama, says Corneille Le Bruyer, the famous Dutch painter, relates, that “happening one day to dine at the table of Newton, with other foreigners, when the dessert was sent up, Newton proposed, ‘a health to the men of every country who believed in a God;’ which,” says the editor, “was drinking the health of the whole human race.” Equal to this was
THE PIETY OF RAY,
The celebrated naturalist and divine, who (when ejected from his fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge, for non-conformity, and, for the same reason, being no longer at liberty to exercise his clerical functions as a preacher of the Gospel,) turned to the pursuit of the sciences of natural philosophy and botany for consolation. “Because I could no longer serve God in the church,” said this great and good man (in his Preface to the Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation,) “I thought myself more bound to do it by my writings.”
THE DEVIL LOOKING OVER LINCOLN.
Is a tradition of many ages’ standing, but the origin of the celebrated statue of his Satanic Majesty, which of erst overlooked Lincoln College, Oxford, is not so certain as that the effigy was popular, and gave rise to the saying. After outstanding centuries of hot and cold, jibes and jeers, “cum multis aliis,” to which stone, as well as flesh, is heir, it was taken down on the 15th of November, 1731, says a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, having lost its head in a storm about two years previously, at the same time the head was blown off the statue of King Charles the First, which overlooked Whitehall.
RADCLIFFE’S LIBRARY.
Tom Warton relates, in his somewhat rambling Life of Dr. Ralph Bathurst, President of Trinity College, Oxford, that Dr. Radcliffe was a student of Lincoln College when Dr. B. presided over Trinity; but notwithstanding their difference of age and distance of situation, the President used to visit the young student at Lincoln College “merely for the smartness of his conversation.” During one of these morning or evening calls, Dr. B. observing the embryo physician had but few books in his chambers, asked him “Where was his study?” upon which young Radcliffe replied, pointing to a few books, a skeleton, and a herbal, “This, Sir, is Radcliffe’s library.” Tom adds the following
TRAITS OF DR. BATHURST’S WIT AND HABITS.
When the Doctor was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, a captain of a company, who had fought bravely in the cause of his royal master, King Charles the First, being recommended to him for the degree of D.C.L., the doctor told the son of Mars he could not confer the degree, “but he would apply to his majesty to give him a regiment of horse!”
HE FREQUENTLY CARRIED A WHIP IN HIS HAND,
An instrument of correction not entirely laid aside in our universities in his time; but (says Tom) he only “delighted to surprise scholars, when walking in the grove at unseasonable hours. This he practised,” adds Warton, “on account of the pleasure he took in giving so odd an alarm, rather than from any principle of reproving, or intention of applying so illiberal a punishment.” One thing is certain, that in the statutes of Trinity College, Oxford (as late as 1556,) scholars of the foundation are ordered to be
WHIPPED EVEN TO THE TWENTIETH YEAR.
“Dr. Potter,” says Aubery, while a tutor of the above college, “whipped his pupil with his sword by his side, when he came to take his leave of him to go to the Inns of Court.” This was done to make him a smart fellow. “In Sir John Fane’s collection of letters of the Paston family, written temp. Henry VI.,” says the author of the Gradus ad Catabrigiam, “we find one of the gentle sex prescribing for her son, who was at Cambridge,” no doubt with a maternal anxiety that he should
BE A SMART FELLOW,
as follows:—“Prey Grenefield to send me faithfully worde by wrytyn, who (how) Clemit Paston hathe do his dever i’ lernying, and if he hath nought do well, nor will nought amend, prey hym that he wyll truely BELASH hym tyl he wyll amend, and so dyd the last mastyr, and the best eu’ he had at Cambridge.” And that Master Grenefield might not want due encouragement, she concludes with promising him “X m’rs,” for his pains. We do not, however, learn how many marks young Master Clemit received, who certainly took more pains.—Patiendo non faciendo—Ferendo non feriendo.
MILTON WAS BELASHED
over the buttery-hatch of Christ-College, Cambridge, and, as Dr. Johnson insinuates in his Life, was the last Cambridge student so castigated in either university. The officer who performed this fundamental operation was Dr. Thomas Bainbrigge, the master of Christ’s College. But as it was at a later date that Dr. Ralph Bathurst carried his whip, according to our friend Tom’s showing, to surprise the scholars, it is therefore going a great length to give our “Prince of Poets” the sole merit of being the last smart fellow that issued from the halls of either Oxford or Cambridge, handsome as he was.
The following celebrated
EPIGRAM ON AN EPIGRAM,
Printed, says the Oxford Sausage, “from the original MSS. preserved in the ARCHIVES of the Jelly-bag Society,” is somewhere said to have been written by Dr. Ralph Bathurst, when an Oxford scholar:—
One day in Christ-church meadows walking, Of poetry and such things talking, Says Ralph, a merry wag, An EPIGRAM, if right and good, In all its circumstances should Be like a JELLY-BAG. Your simile, I own, is new, But how dost make it out? quoth Hugh. Quoth Ralph, I’ll tell you, friend: Make it at top both wide and fit To hold a budget full of wit, And point it at the end.
TELL US WHAT YOU CAN’T DO?
A party of Oxford scholars were one evening carousing at the Star Inn, when a waggish student, a stranger to them, abruptly introduced himself, and seeing he was not “one of us,” they all began to quiz him. This put him upon his mettle,