Part 12

The first, it is well known, vacated his fellowship, and left himself pennyless, rather than subscribe to the _Thirty-nine Articles_, from which there is no doubt he conscientiously dissented; and when asked to subscribe his belief in the notorious Shakspeare _forgery_ of the Irelands, his reply was, "I subscribe to no articles of faith." When Paley was solicited to sign his name to the supplication of the petitioning clergy, for _relief from subscription_, he has the credit of replying, he "_could not afford to keep a conscience_," a saying that many have cherished to the prejudice of that great man's memory, but which it is more than probable he said in his dry, humorous manner, without suspicion it would be remembered at all, and merely to rid himself of some importunate applicant. Paley, it is well known, notwithstanding the conclusions to which some interested writers have come, was strongly and conscientiously attached to the doctrines and constitution of the Established Church; and it was impossible but that, with his fine common-sense perception, he must have been well aware, that no _Established Church_, such as is that of England, could long exist as such, _if not fenced round by articles of faith_. And here I am reminded of an

ANECDOTE OF THE GREAT LORD BURLEIGH AND THE DISSENTERS OF HIS DAY.

He was once very much pressed by a body of Divines, says Collins, in his Life, to make some _alteration in the Liturgy_, upon which he desired them to go into the next room by themselves, and bring in their _unanimous opinion on the disputed points_. But they very soon returned _without being able to agree_. "Why, gentlemen," said he, "how can you expect that I should alter my point in dispute, when you, who must be more competent to judge, from your situation, than I can possibly be, cannot agree among yourselves in what manner you would have me alter it."

OTHER SAYINGS OF THIS GREAT MAN

Were, that he would "never truste anie man not of sounde religion; for he that is false to God, can never be true to man."

Parents, he said, were to be blamed for "the unthrifty looseness of youth," who made them men seven years too soon, and when they "had but children's judgments."

"Warre is the curse, and peace the blessinge of a countrie;" and "a realme," he said, "gaineth more by one year's peace, than by tenne years' warre."

"That nation," he would observe, "was happye where the king would take counsell and follow it." With such a sage minister, it is not surprising that Elizabeth was the greatest princess that ever lived, nor that she gave such wise laws to Cambridge, whose Chancellor he was.

PORSON'S PROGRESS IN KNOWLEDGE.

"When I was seventeen," Porson once observed, "I thought I knew every thing; as soon as I was twenty-four, and had read Bentley, I found I knew nothing. Now I have challenged the great scholars of the age to find _five_ faults to their _one_, in any work, ancient or modern, they decline it." On another occasion, he described himself as

A GENTLEMAN WITHOUT SIXPENCE IN HIS POCKET.

Person declining to enter into holy orders, as the statute of his college required he should do, lost his fellowship at Trinity, after he had enjoyed it ten years; "on which heart-rending occasion," says his friend and admirer, Dr. Kidd, "he used to observe, with his usual good humour (for nothing could depress him,) that he was _a gentleman living in London without a sixpence in his pocket_." Two years afterwards his friends procured his election to the Regius Professorship of Greek, on the death of Professor Cooke, the sudden news of which event, he says, in a letter printed in Parriana, addressed to the then Master of Trinity, the learned Dr. Postlethwaite, all his ambition of that sort having been long ago laid asleep, "put me in mind of poor Jacob, who, having served seven years in hope of being rewarded with Rachel, awoke, and behold it was Leah." He had seven years previously projected a course of lectures in Greek, which most unaccountably were not patronised by the Senate.

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GREEK PROTESTANTS AT OXFORD.

Mr. Pointer says, in his _Oxoniensis Academia, &c._, speaking of the curiosities connected with Worcester College, there were "Ruins of a Royal Palace, built by King Henry the First, in Beaumont, near Gloucester-green, upon some parts of which ruins, the late Dr. Woodroff (when principal of Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College) built lodgings for the education of young scholars from Greece, who, after they had been here educated in the reformed religion, were to be sent back to their own country, in order to propagate the same there. And accordingly some young Grecians were brought hither, and wore their Grecian habits; but not finding suitable encouragement, this project came to nothing."

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JUDGMENT OF ERASMUS ON THE CAMBRIDGE FOLK.

Fuller says, that Erasmus thus wrote of the Cambridge folk, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. "Vulgus Cantabrigiense, inhospitales Britannos antecedit, qui cum summa rusticitate summum militiam conjunxere." This will by no means _now_ apply to the better class of tradespeople, and in no place that I know of is there more hospitality amongst the higher orders of society. Kirk White, in his Letters, is not very complimentary either to

BEDMAKERS OR GYPS.

The latter are called _scouts_ in Oxford, and their office borders on what is generally understood by the word _valet_. The term _Gyp_ is well applied from [Greek: Gyps], a _vulture_, they being, in the broadest sense of the word, addicted to _prey_, and not over-scrupulous at both _picking_ and _stealing_, in spite of the Decalogue. I had one evening had a _wine party_, during the warm season of the year; we drank freely, and two of the party taking possession of my bed, I contented myself with the sofa. About six in the morning the _Gyp_ came into the room to collect boots, &c. and either not seeing me, or fancying I slept (the wine being left on the table,) he very coolly filled himself a glass, which he lost no time in raising to his lips, but ere he had swallowed a drop, having watched his motions, I _whistled_ (significant of recognition,) and down went the wine, glass and all, and out bolted our _gyp_, who _actually blushed_ the next time he saw me. Another anecdote touching lodging-house keepers, I will head

DROPS OF BRANDY.

A certain mistress of a lodging-house, in Green-street, Cambridge, where several students had rooms, having a propensity, not for the _ethereal_ charms of the music so called, but for the invigorating liquor itself, had a habit, with the assistance of what is called a _screw-driver_, but which might more aptly be termed a _screw-drawer_, of opening cupboard doors without resorting to the ordinary use of a key. By this means she had one day abstracted a bottle of brandy from the store of one of the students (now a barrister of some practice and standing,) with which, the better to consume it in undisturbed dignity, she retired to the temple of the goddess Cloacina. She had been missed for some time, and search was made, when she was found _half seas over_, as they say, with the remnant of the bottle still grasped in her hand, which she had plied so often to her mouth, that she was unable to lift her hand so high, or indeed to rise from her _seditious_ posture. Upon this scene a caricature of the first water was sketched, and circulated by some Cambridge wag; another threw off the following Epigrammatic Conun:

Why is my Dalia like a rose? Perhaps, you'll say, because her breath Is sweeter than the flowers of earth: No--odious thought--it is, her nose Is redder than the reddest rose; Which she has long been very handy At colouring with _drops of brandy_.

Another head of a lodging-house is a notorious member of what in Cambridge is called--

THE DIRTY-SHIRT CLUB.

This is a society that has existed in the town of Cambridge for ages, whose functions consist in _wearing the linen of the students who lodge in their houses after it has been cast off for the laundress_. This same individual, however, had a taste for higher game, and one of the students, who had rooms in his house, being called to London for a few days, returning rather unexpectedly, actually found mine host at the head of the table, in his sitting-room, surrounded by some twenty _snobs_, his friends. Our gownsman very properly resented his impertinence, took him by the collar and waist, and, in the language of that fine old song, goose-a-goose-a-gander, "_threw him down stairs_." The rest of the party prudently followed at this hint, leaving the table covered with the remains of sundry bottles of wine and a rich dessert. Thus the affair terminated at that time: but our gownsman being a man of fortune, and one of those accustomed, therefore, to treat his brother students, his friends, sumptuously too, went two or three days after, to his fruiterer's, to order

DESSERT FOR TWENTY.

"The same as you had on Wednesday?" inquired the fruiterer. "On Wednesday!" he exclaimed with astonishment,--"I had _no_ dessert on Wednesday!" "Oh, yes, sir," was the rejoinder, "Mr. ---- himself ordered it for you, and, as I before said, for twenty!" The whole matter was soon understood to be, that the lodging-house keeper had actually done him the honour to give his brother snobs, of the _dirty shirt fraternity_, an invite and sumptuous entertainment at his expense! Of course, he did not remain in the house of such a _free-and-easy-gent_. I name the fact as a recent occurrence, and

A HINT FOR GOWNSMEN.

But this is not the only way in which they are fleeced: the minor articles of _grocery_ are easily appropriated: nay, not only easily appropriated, but a _duplicate_ order is occasionally delivered _for the benefit of the house_. Some tradesmen have made

MARVELLOUS STRIDES ON THE ROAD TO WEALTH,

From various causes. I remember one man who, in six years, beginning life at the _very beginning_, saved enough to retire upon an independence for the rest of his life. Did he _chalk double_? I answer not. But students should look to these things. At St. John's College, Cambridge, the tutors have adopted an excellent plan by which, with ordinary diligence, cheats may be detected: they oblige the tradesmen to furnish them with duplicates of their bills against the students, one of which is handed to the latter, and any error pointed out, they will be _forced_ to rectify.

ANOTHER SPECIES OF FRAUD

Is a trick tradesmen have, in the Universities, of _persuading_ students to get into their debt, actually pressing their wares upon them, and then, when their books show sufficient reason, forsooth, they _make a mock_ assignment of their affairs over to their creditors, and some _pettifogging_ attorney addresses the unlucky debtors with an intimation, that, unless the account is forthwith paid, together with the expenses of the application, further proceedings will be taken! though the wily tradesman has assured the purchaser of his articles that credit would run to any _length he pleased_: and so it does, and no longer. Such fellows should be _marked and cut_! It is but justice to add, however, that these observations do not apply to that respectable class of tradesmen, of whom the student _should_ purchase his necessaries. The motto of every student, notwithstanding, who is desirous of not injuring his future prospects in life, by too profuse an expenditure, should be "fugies Uticam,"--keep out of debt!

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THE SOURCE OF DR. PARR'S ELOQUENCE.

Some of Dr. Parr's hearers, struck with a remarkable passage in his sermon, asked him "Whether he had read it from his book?" "Oh, no," said he, "it was the light of nature suddenly flashing upon me." He once called a clergyman _a fool_. The divine, indignant, threatened to complain to the Bishop. "Do so," was the reply, "and my Lord Bishop will _confirm you_."

To the same wit, when a student at Emanuel College, is attributed the celebrated--

ADDRESS TO HIS TEA-CHEST,

"_Tu doces_," (_thou tea-chest_!) Others give the paternity to Lord Erskine, when a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge; _n'importe_, they were friends.

AS A SPICE OF THEIR JOINT VANITY,

It is related of them, that one day, sipping their wine together, the Doctor exclaimed, "Should you give me an opportunity, Erskine, I promise myself the pleasure of writing your epitaph." "Sir," was the reply, "it's a temptation to commit suicide." On another occasion more than one authority concur in the Doctor's thus

ASSURING HIMSELF A PLACE AMONGST THE GREEK SCHOLARS OF HIS DAY.

"Porson, sir, is the first, always the first; we all yield to him. Burney is the third. Who is the second, I leave you to guess."

ANOTHER SPICE OF HIS VANITY

Peeped out on his one night being seated in the side gallery at the House of Commons, with the late Sir James Mackintosh, &c., where he could see and be seen by the members of the opposition, his friends. The debate was one of great importance. Fox at length rose, and as he proceeded in his address, the Doctor grew more and more animated, till at length he rose as if with the intention of speaking. He was reminded of the impropriety, and immediately sat down. After Fox had concluded, he exclaimed: "Had I followed any other profession, I might have been sitting by the side of that illustrious statesman; I should have had all his powers of argument,--all Erskine's eloquence,--and all Hargrave's law." He had one day been arguing and disagreeing with a lady, who said, "Well, Dr. Parr,

I STILL MAINTAIN MY OPINION."

"Madam," he rejoined, "you may, if you please, _retain_ your opinion: but you cannot _maintain_ it." Another lady once opposing his opinions with more pertinacity than cogency of reasoning, concluded with the observation, "You know, Doctor,

IT IS THE PRIVILEGE OF WOMEN TO TALK NONSENSE."

"No, madam," he replied, "it is not their _privilege_, but their _infirmity_. Ducks would walk, if they could, but nature suffers them only to waddle."

After some persons, at a party where the Doctor made one, had expressed their regret that he had not written more, or something more worthy of his fame, a young scholar somewhat pertly called out to him, "Suppose, Dr. Parr, you and I were to write a book together!" "Young man," exclaimed the chafed lion, "if all were to be written in that book which I _do_ know, and which you _do not_ know, it would be a very large book indeed." The following are given by Field as his

REPROOFS OF IGNORANCE TALKING WITH THE CONFIDENCE OF KNOWLEDGE.

He was once insisting on the importance of discipline, established by a wise system, and enforced with a steady hand, in schools, in colleges, in the navy, in the army; when he was somewhat suddenly and rudely taken up by a young officer who had just received his commission, and was not a little proud of his "blushing honours." "What, sir," said he, addressing the Doctor, "do you mean to apply that word _discipline_ to the _officers_ of the army? It may be well enough for the _privates_." "Yes, sir, I do," replied the Doctor, sternly: "It is _discipline_ makes the scholar, it is _discipline_ makes the soldier, it is _discipline_ makes the gentleman, and the _want of discipline_ has made you what you are."

BEING MUCH ANNOYED

By the pert remarks of another tyro,--"Sir," said he, "your tongue goes to work before your brain; and when your brain does work, it generates nothing but error and absurdity." The maxim of men of experience, the Doctor might have added, is, "to think twice before they act once." To a third person, of bold and forward but ill-supported pretensions, he said, "B----, you have read _little_, thought _less_, and know _nothing_."

HE MATCHED A TRICK OF THE DEVIL.

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

THREE CLASSICAL PUNS:

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

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 [Greek: eurêka]." "When the late Dr. Watson," adds the same writer, "presided in the divinity-schools, at

AN ACT KEPT BY DR. MILNER,

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."

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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."

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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."

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THEY TAKE THEM AS THEY COME.

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,

THE DARLING SON OF HIS MOTHER,

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

MISCALCULATING MAMMA,