NUTS TO CRACK; (continued 4)

JUDGMENT OF PROFESSOR HALLIFAX.

When Queen Elizabeth was questioned on the subject of her faith in the Sacrament, she dexterously avoided giving offence by replying—

Scarcely less ingenious was the reply of Bishop Hallifax, when Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, upon Dr. Parr and the Rev. Joseph Smith (both resident at Stanmore) applying to him for his judgment on a literary dispute between them. His response was in the following official language, by which he dexterously avoided the imputation of partiality:—

“Nolo interponere judicium meum.”

His name reminds me that he married a Cooke, the daughter of Dr. William Cooke, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, for whom George the Third had so great a regard, that he extended it to his children. The Bishop and his wife being at Cheltenham when the King was there, and some person asking why his Majesty paid Dr. Hallifax such marked respect, was answered, “Sir, he married a Cooke.” This being in the presence of

THE CELEBRATED OXONIAN, DEAN TUCKER,

“I, too,” he facetiously remarked, “have a claim to his Majesty’s attention, for I married a cook,” alluding to the fact, that his second wife originally held that rank in his domestic establishment.

OH! FOR A DISTICH.

A Pembrokian Cantab, named Penlycross, having written an Essay, a candidate for the Norrisian prize (which it was necessary he should subscribe with a Greek or Latin motto, as well as a sealed letter, enclosing his name, after being for a time at a loss for one,) and having an ominous presentiment of its rejection, he seized his pen and subscribed the following on both:

SKELETON SERMONS.

The author of the Pursuits of Literature ridicules the epithet “Skeleton Sermons,” as “ridiculous and absurd,” speaking of those of the Rev. Charles Simeon, M.A. now Senior Fellow of King’s College. When, in 1796, that divine published his edition of Claude’s Essay on a Sermon, with an Appendix containing one hundred Skeleton Sermons, the celebrated Dr. William Cooke, father of the late Regius Professor of Greek, was Provost of King’s, and to him, as in duty bound, Mr. Simeon presented a copy. The Provost read it with his natural appearance of a proud and dignified humility, and, struck with the unfortunate and somewhat ludicrous title of Skeleton Sermons, “Skeletons! skeletons!” he exclaimed, in his significant way, “Shall these dry bones live?” What would the Provost have thought and said, had he lived to see an edition of them in ten volumes 4to. price ten guineas?

I WISH HE HAD PAID IT FIRST.

The present Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, being told that one of his pupils, the author of “Alma Mater,” had therein published his bill, coolly replied, “I wish he had paid it first.” Another Cantab had—

A MIND TO MAKE TRIAL OF THE STOCKS,

Which unluckily stood in the church-yard, and it happening to be a saint’s day, the congregation were at prayers, of which he was ignorant, when he got a friend to put him in. His friend sauntered away, whether wilfully or not I leave my readers to guess, and he was in vain struggling to release himself, when the congregation issued forth, who were not a little moved at his situation. Many laughed, but one, an old woman, compassionately released him. A similar story is told of the celebrated son of Granta,

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE PRATT,

Who had afterwards to try a cause in which the plaintiff had brought his action against a magistrate for falsely imprisoning him in the stocks. The counsel for the defence arguing that the action was a frivolous one, on the ground that the stocks were no punishment, his Lordship beckoned his learned brother to him, and told him, in his ear, that having himself been put in the stocks, he could assure him it was no such slight punishment as he represented, and the plaintiff obtained a verdict against the magistrate in consequence.

HISSING VERSUS MONEY.

Parker says, in his Musical Memoirs, that the Oxford scholars once hissed Madame Mara, conceiving she assumed too much importance in her bearing. No wonder they so treated Signor Samperio, one evening at a concert, attracted, when he came forward to sing, by his “tall, lank figure, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and shrill voice;” in fact, they hissed him off before he had half got through his cavatina. The gentleman who acted as steward was deeply moved at his situation, and, going up to Samperio, endeavoured to soothe him. But the signor, not at all hurt, replied, “O, sare, never mind; dey may hissa me as much as dey please, if I getti di money.” Another anecdote is told of—

TWO OXFORD SCHOLARS POSING DR. HAYES,

The late musical professor, who was some six feet high, and scarcely inferior in bulk to the famous Essex miller. He had at last so much difficulty in getting in and out of a stage coach, that whenever he went from Oxford to London to conduct the annual performances at St. Paul’s, for the benefit of the Sons of the Clergy, which he did for many years gratis, his custom was to engage a whole seat to himself, and when once in and seated to remain so till the end of the journey. The fact became known to two Oxford wags, who resolved to pose the Doctor, and to that end engaged the other two inside places, and taking care to be there before him, seated themselves in the opposite corners, one to the right the other to the left, and there the Doctor found them, on arriving to take his place. “How was he to dispose of his corpus?” was the query: they had a clear right to their seats, and no alternative seemed left him, as they declined moving, but to place his head in one corner and his feet in the other. At last our Oxonians, having fully enjoyed the dilemma in which they had placed the Doctor, consented to give way, confessed their purpose, and even the Doctor had the good sense to laugh at his own expense.

GROSS INDEED.

When the celebrated Cantab, and editor of Lucretius, Gilbert Wakefield, was convicted of a libel before the late Judge Grose, who sentenced him to fine and imprisonment, turning from the bar, he said, with the spirit of a Frenchman, it was—“gross indeed.” To the same learned Cantab, Dyer attributes the following—

PUN UPON PYE.

Being asked once his opinion of the poetry of Pye, the then Poet Laureat, his reply was, that he thought very handsomely of some of Mr. P.’s poems, which he had read. This did not suffice, and he was pressed for his opinion of the Laureat-Ode that had just appeared in the public prints. Not having seen it, he desired his friend to read it to him, and the introductory lines containing something about the singing of birds, Wakefield abruptly silenced him with this happy allusion to the Laureat’s name, in the following nursery rhymes:—

THE CAMBRIDGE FAMILY OF SPINTEXTS

Begun with John Alcock, LL.D., Bishop of Ely, and founder of Jesus College.

In 1483, says Wilson, in his Memorabilia Cantabrigiæ, he preached before the University “Bonum et blandum sermonem prædicavit, et duravit in horam tertiam et ultra,” which is supposed to be a sermon that was printed in his lifetime, in 1498, by the famous Pynson, entitled, “Galli Cantus ad Confratres suos Curatos in Synodo, apud Barnwell, 25th September, 1498,” at the head of which is a print of the Bishop preaching to the Clergy, with a cock at each side, and another in the first page. The next most celebrated preacher of this class was

DOCTOR ISAAC BARROW,

The friend, partly tutor, and most learned contemporary of Newton, whom Charles the Second said was an unfair preacher, leaving nothing new to be said by those who followed him. He was once appointed, upon some public occasion, to preach before the Dean and Chapter in Westminster Abbey, and gave them a discourse of nearly four hours in length. During the latter part of it, the congregation became so tired of sitting, that they dropped out, one by one, till scarcely another creature besides the Dean and choristers were left. Courtesy kept the Dean in his place, but soon his patience got the better of his manners,

“Verba per attentam non ibunt Cæsaris aurem,”

and beckoning one of the singing boys, he desired him to go and tell the organist to play him down, which was done. When asked, on descending from the pulpit, if he did not feel exhausted, he replied, “No; only a little tired with standing so long.” A third “long-winded preacher” (and they were never admired at either Oxford or Cambridge, where “short and sweet” is preferred) was

DOCTOR SAMUEL PARR.

He delivered his justly celebrated Spital Sermon in the accustomed place, Christ-Church, Newgate Street, Easter Tuesday, 1800, before his friend, Harvey Christian Combe, Esq., M.P., the celebrated brewer, then Lord Mayor. “Before the service begun,” says one of his friends, “I went into the vestry, and found Dr. Parr seated, with pipes and tobacco placed before him on the table. He evidently felt the importance of the occasion, but felt, at the same time, a confidence in his own powers. When he ascended the pulpit, a profound silence prevailed. The sermon occupied nearly an hour and a quarter in the delivery; and in allusion to its extreme length, it was remarked by a lady, who had been asked her opinion of it, “enough there is, and more than enough”—the first words of its first sentence,—a bon mot he is said to have received with good humour. As he and the Lord Mayor were coming out of the church, the latter, albeit unused to the facetious mode, “Well,” said Dr. Parr to him, always anxious for well-merited praise, “how did you like the sermon? Let me have the suffrage of your strong and honest understanding.” “Why, Doctor,” returned his lordship, “there were four things in your sermon I did not like to hear.” “State them,” replied Parr, eagerly. “Why, to speak frankly, then,” said Combe, “they were the quarters of the church clock, which struck four times before you had finished it.” “I once saw, lying in the Chapter Coffee-house,” says Dyer, in a letter printed in Parriana, “the Doctor’s Spital Sermon, with a comical caricature of him, in the pulpit, preaching and smoking at the same time, with ex fumo dare lucem issuing from his mouth.”

ANOTHER CLASS OF PREACHERS

At Cambridge, and eke at Oxford, have taken an opposite course, and from their being to be had at all times, have at the former place, obtained the soubriquet “Hack Preachers.” In the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, they are described as “the common exhibitioners at St. Mary’s, employed in the service of defaulters and absentees. It must be confessed, however,” adds this writer, “that these HACKS are good fast trotters, as they commonly go over the course in twenty minutes, and sometimes less.” Gilbert Wakefield, whom nobody will suspect of forbearance, calls them, in his Memoirs, “a piteous, unedifying tribe.” This, however, can scarcely be applied to the ordinary preachers of the present day, and especial care is taken by the heads of the university that the select preachers (one of whom is named for each month during term-time) do not name substitutes themselves. The following poetic jeu d’esprit, entitled “Lines on three of the appointed Preachers of St. Mary’s, Cambridge, attacking Calvin” were no others than the three eminent living divines, Dr. Butler, Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Chichester, and Dr. Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough:—

This punning morsel, of some standing in the university, is scarce surpassed by Hood himself:—

THE THREE-HEADED PRIEST.

MY BEEF BURNT TO A CINDER.

The family of the Spintexts have, it appears, very lately put forth a scion, in the person of a learned divine, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, being appointed a Select Preacher in 1835, delivered a discourse of the extraordinary duration of an hour and a half! The present Father of the University and Master of Peter-house, Dr. Francis Barnes, upwards of ninety years of age, was one of the heads present. He sat out the first three quarters of an hour, but then began to be fidgetty. Another quarter of an hour expired,—the preacher was still in the midst of his discourse. The Doctor (now become right down impatient,) being seated the lowest (next to the Vice-Chancellor) in Golgotha, or the “Place of Skulls,” as it is called, he moved, first one seat higher (the preacher is still on his legs,) then to a third, then to a fourth, then to a fifth; and before the hour and a half had quite expired, he joined one of the junior esquire bedells at the top, to whom he observed, with that original expression of face for which he is so remarkable, “my beef is burnt to a cinder.”

SHORT HAND WRITING WAS INVENTED BY A CANTAB,

According to the first volume of the Librarian, published by Mr. Savage, of the London Institution; who says, that the first work printed on the subject was by Dr. Timothy Bright, of Cambridge, in 1598, who dedicated it to Queen Elizabeth, under the title of “An art of short, swift, and secret writing, by Character.”

THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE LADIES.

Before the erection of the Senate-House in the University of Cambridge, the annual grand Commencement was held in St. Mary’s, the University church. “It seems,” says Dyer, in his History of Cambridge, “that on these occasions (the time when gentlemen take their degrees”) that is, the degree of M.A. more particularly, “ladies had been allowed to sit in that part of the church assigned to the doctors, called THE THRONE: it was, however, at length agreed amongst them (the doctors) that ladies should be no longer permitted to sit there; and the place assigned to them was under the throne, in the church.” This invasion of what the fair almost looked upon as the abstraction of a right, led to a partial war of words and inuendos, and the matter was at last taken up by the facetious Roger Long, D.D., Master of Pembroke College, who, he adds, in his Supplement to his History, was celebrated for his Treatise on Astronomy, and for his erection of a sphere in his College eighteen feet in diameter, still shown there. On this humorous occasion, he was a dissentient against the Heads, not a little bustle was excited amongst the Cambridge ladies, a subject for a few jokes was afforded the wags of the University, and he produced his famous music-speech, spoken at the public Commencement of 1714, on the 6th of July, which was afterwards published, but is now very scarce. It was delivered in an assumed character, as “being the Petition of the Ladies of Cambridge,” and is full of whim and humour, in Swift’s best manner, beginning—

“How he could have delivered it in so sacred a place as St. Mary’s,” says Dyer, “is matter of surprise (though they say, good fun, like good coin, is current any where.”) It is pleasant to see a grave man descend from his heights, as Pope says, “to guard the fair.” Though nobody could probably be much offended at the time, unless the Vice-Chancellor, whom, if we understand the writer’s meaning, he calls an old woman, when he says—

But the Doctor had

A NATURAL TURN FOR HUMOUR,

As is further illustrated by the celebrated Mr. Jones, of Welwyn, who calls him “a very ingenious person.” “At the public Commencement of 1713,” he says, “Dr. Greene (Master of Bene’t College, and afterwards Bishop of Ely) being then Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Long was pitched upon for the tripos performance: it was witty and humorous, and has passed through divers editions. Some who remembered the delivery of it, told me, that in addressing the Vice-Chancellor (whom the University wags usually styled Miss Greene,) the tripos-orator, being a native of Norfolk, and assuming the Norfolk dialect, instead of saying Domine Vice-Cancellarie, did very audibly pronounce the words thus,—Domina Vice-Cancellaria; which occasioned a general smile in that great auditory.” I could recollect several other

INGENIOUS REPARTEES

Of his, if there were occasion, adds Mr. Jones: but his friend, Mr. Bonfoy, of Ripon, told me this little incident:—that he, and Dr. Long walking together in Cambridge, in a dusky evening, and coming to a short post fixed in the pavement, which Mr. B., in the midst of chat and inattention, took to be a boy standing in his way, he said in a hurry, “Get out of my way, boy.” “That boy, sir,” said the Doctor, very calmly and slily, “is a post boy, who turns off his way for nobody.”

CELEBRATED ALL OVER GERMANY.

George the Second is said, like his father, to have had a strong predilection for his continental dominions, of which his ministers did not fail, occasionally, to take advantage. A residentiary of St. Paul’s cathedral happening to fall vacant, Lord Granville was anxious to secure it for the learned translator of Demosthenes, Dr. John Taylor, fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. The King started some scruples at first, but his Lordship carried his point easily, on assuring his Majesty, which was the fact, that “the Doctor’s learning was celebrated all over Germany.”

REBUSES AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

BECKINGTON.

The learned prelate, at whose expense the rector’s lodgings were built at Lincoln College, Oxford, is commemorated by his rebus, a beacon and a tun, which may still be traced on the walls.

ALCOCK,

Founder of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Ely, either rebused himself, or was rebused by others, in almost every conspicuous part of his College, by a cock perched upon a globe. On one window is a cock with a label from its mouth, bearing the inscription, Εγω ειμι αλεκτωρ: to which another opposite bravely crows, says Cole, Οντως και εγω:

There is a plate of him at the head of his celebrated Sermon, printed by Pynson, in 1498, with a cock at each side, and another on the first page. The subject of the discourse is the crowing of the cock when Peter denied Christ.

EGLESFIELD,

The celebrated founder of Queen’s College, Oxford, who was a native of Cumberland, and confessor to Philippa, Queen of Edward the Third, gave the College, for its arms, three spread eagles; but a singular custom, according to a rebus, has been founded upon the fanciful derivation of his name, from aiguille, needle, and fil, thread; and it became a commemorative mark of respect, continued to this day, for each member of the College to receive from the Bursar, on New Year’s Day, a needle and thread, with the advice, “Take this and be thrifty.” “These conceits were not unusual at the time the College was founded,” says Chalmers, in his History of Oxford, “and are sometimes thought trifling, merely because we cannot trace their original use and signification. Hollingshed informs us, that when the Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry the Fifth, who was educated at this College, went to Court in order to clear himself from certain charges of disaffection, he wore a gown of blue satin, full of oilet holes, and at every hole a needle hanging by a silk thread. This is supposed to prove at least, that he was an academician of Queen’s, and it may be conjectured that this was the original academical dress.” The same writer says, the Founder ordered that the Society should “be called to their meals by the sound of the trumpet (a practice which still prevails, as does a similar one at the Middle Temple, London,) and the Fellows being placed on one side of the table in robes of scarlet (those of the Doctor’s faced with black fur,) were to oppose in philosophy the poor scholars, who, in token of submission and humility, kept on the other side. As late as the last century the Fellows and Taberders used sometimes to dispute on Sundays and holidays.

ASHTON.

In an arched recess of the ante-chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge, is the tomb of the celebrated Dr. Hugh Ashton, who took part with the famous Bishop Fisher (beheaded by Henry the Eighth) in the erection of the buildings of that learned foundation, and was the second Master of the Society. His tomb, as Fuller observes, exhibits “the marble effigy of his body when living, and the humiliating contrast of his skeleton when dead, with the usual conceit of the times, the figure of an ash tree growing out of a tun.”

LAKE LEMAN.

Dyer records of the learned contemporary and antiquarian coadjutor of the late Bishop of Cloyne, the Rev. Mr. Leman, a descendant of the famous Sir Robert Naunton, Public Orator at Cambridge, and a Secretary of State, that “his drawing-room was painted en fresco with the scenery around Lake Leman.”

SOMETHING IN YOUR WAY.

The same relates of himself, that, one day looking at some caricatures at a window in Fleet-street, Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot,) whom he knew, came up to him. “There, sir,” said Mr. Dyer to the Doctor, pointing to the caricatures, “is something in your way.” “And there is something in your way,” rejoined the Doctor, pointing to some of the ladies of the pave who happened to be passing. Peter was sure to pay in full.

DUNS

Have ever been a grievous source of disquietude to both Oxonians and Cantabs. Tom Randolph, the favourite son of Ben Johnson, made them the subject of his muse. But in no instance, perhaps, have the race been so completely put to the blush, “couleur de rose,” as by the following

ODE ON THE PLEASURE OF BEING OUT OF DEBT.