Lang Andrew
Oxford
CHAPTER VI
HIGH TORY OXFORD
The name of her late Majesty Queen Anne has for some little time been a kind of party watch-word. Many harmless people have an innocent loyalty to this lady, make themselves her knights (as Mary Antoinette has still her sworn champions in France and Mary Stuart in Scotland), buy the plate of her serene period, and imitate the dress. To many moral critics in the press, however, Queen Anne is a kind of abomination. I know not how it is, but the terms ‘Queen Anne furniture and blue china’ have become words of almost slanderous railing. Any didactic journalist who uses them is certain at once to fall heavily on the artistic reputation of Mr. Burne Jones, to rebuke the philosophy of Mr. Pater, and to hint that the entrance-hall of the Grosvenor Gallery is that ‘by-way’ with which Bunyan has made us familiar. In the changes of things our admiration of the Augustan age of our literature, the age of Addison and Steele, of Marlborough and Aldrich, has become a sort of reproach. It may be that our modern preachers know but little of that which they traduce. At all events, the Oxford of Queen Anne’s time was not what they call ‘un-English,’ but highly conservative, and as dull and beer-bemused as the most manly taste could wish it to be.
The Spectator of the ingenious Sir Richard Steele gives us many a glimpse of non-juring Oxford. The old fashion of Sanctity (Mr. Addison says, in the Spectator, No. 494) had passed away; nor were appearances of Mirth and Pleasure looked upon as the Marks of a Carnal Mind. Yet the Puritan Rule was not so far forgotten, but that Mr. Anthony Henley (a Gentleman of Property) could remember how he had stood for a Fellowship in a certain College whereof a great Independent Minister was Governor. As Oxford at this Moment is much vexed in her Mind about Examinations, wherein, indeed, her whole Force is presently expended, I make no scruple to repeat the account of Mr. Henley’s Adventure:
‘The Youth, according to Custom, waited on the Governor of his College, to be examined. He was received at the Door by a Servant, who was one of that gloomy Generation that were then in Fashion. He conducted him with great Silence and Seriousness to a long Gallery which was darkened at Noon-day, and had only a single Candle burning in it. After a short stay in this melancholy Apartment, he was led into a Chamber hung with black, where he entertained himself for some time by the glimmering of a Taper, till at length the Head of the College came out to him from an inner Room, with half a dozen Night Caps upon his Head, and a religious Horror in his Countenance. The Young Man trembled; but his Fears increased when, instead of being asked what progress he had made in Learning, he was ask’d “how he abounded in Grace?” His Latin and Greek stood him in little stead. He was to give an account only of the state of his Soul – whether he was of the Number of the Elect; what was the Occasion of his Conversion; upon what Day of the Month and Hour of the Day it happened; how it was carried on, and when completed. The whole Examination was summed up in one short Question, namely, Whether he was prepared for Death? The Boy, who had been bred up by honest Parents, was frighted out of his wits by the solemnity of the Proceeding, and by the last dreadful Interrogatory, so that, upon making his Escape out of this House of Mourning, he could never be brought a second Time to the Examination, as not being able to go through the Terrors of it.’
By the year 1705, when Tom Hearne, of St. Edmund’s Hall, began to keep his diary, the ‘honest folk’ – that is, the High Churchmen – had the better of the Independent Ministers. The Dissenters had some favour at Court, but in the University they were looked upon as utterly reprobate. From the Reliquiæ of Hearne (an antiquarian successor of Antony Wood, a bibliophile, an archæologist, and as honest a man as Jacobitism could make him) let us quote an example of Heaven’s wrath against Dissenters:
‘Aug. 6, 1706. We have an account from Whitchurch, in Shropshire, that the Dissenters there having prepared a great quantity of bricks to erect a spacious conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoiled them all, and confounded their Babel in the beginning, to their great mortification.’
Hearne’s common-place books are an amusing source of information about Oxford society in the years of Queen Anne, and of the Hanoverian usurper. Tom Hearne was a Master of Arts of St. Edmund’s Hall, and at one time Deputy-Librarian of the Bodleian. He lost this post because he would not take ‘the wicked oaths’ required of him, but he did not therefore leave Oxford. His working hours were passed in preparing editions of antiquarian books, to be printed in very limited number, on ordinary and Large Paper. It was the joy of Tom’s existence to see his editions become first scarce, then Very Scarce, while the price augmented in proportion to the rarity. When he was not reading in his rooms he was taking long walks in the country, tracing Roman walls and roads, and exploring Woodstock Park for the remains of ‘the labyrinth,’ as he calls the Maze of Fair Rosamund. In these strolls he was sometimes accompanied by undergraduates, even gentlemen of noble family, ‘which gave cause to some to envy our happiness.’ Hearne was a social creature, and had a heart, as he shows by the entry about the death of his ‘very dear friend, Mr. Thomas Cherry, A.M., to the great grief of all that knew him, being a gentleman of great beauty, singular modesty, of wonderful good nature, and most excellent principles.’
The friends of Hearne were chiefly, perhaps solely, what he calls ‘honest men,’ supporters of the Stuart family, and always ready to drink his Majesty’s (King James’) health. They would meet in ‘Antiquity Hall,’ an old house near Wadham, and smoke their honest pipes. They held certain of the opinions of ‘the Hebdomadal Meeting,’ satirised by Steele in the Spectator (No. 43). ‘We are much offended at the Act for importing French wines. A bottle or two of good solid Edifying Port, at honest George’s, made a Night cheerful, and threw off Reserve. But this plaguy French Claret will not only cost us more Money but do us less good.’ Hearne had a poor opinion of ‘Captain Steele,’ and of ‘one Tickle: this Tickle is a pretender to poetry.’ He admits that, though ‘Queen’s people are angry at the Spectator, and the common-room say ’tis silly dull stuff, men that are indifferent commend it highly, as it deserves.’ Some other satirist had a plate etched, representing Antiquity Hall – a caricature of Tom’s antiquarian engravings. It may be seen in Skelton’s book.
Thanks to Hearne, it is easy to reproduce the common-room gossip, and the more treasonable talk of honest men at Antiquity Hall. The learned were much interested, as they usually are at Oxford, in theological discussion. Some one proved, by an ingenious syllogism, that all men are to be saved; but Hearne had the better of this Latitudinarian, easily demonstrating that the comfortable argument does not meet the case of madmen, and of deaf-mutes, whom Tom did not expect to meet in a future state. The ingenious, though depressing speculations of Mr. Dodwell were also discussed: ‘He makes the air the receptacle of all souls, good and bad, and that they are under the power of the D – l, he being prince of the air.’ ‘The less perfectly good’ hang out, if we may say so, ‘in the space between earth and the clouds,’ all which is subtle, and creditable to Mr. Dodwell’s invention, but not susceptible of exact demonstration. The whole controversy is an interesting specimen of Queen Anne philosophy, which, with all respect for the taste of the period, we need not wish to see revived. The Bishop of Worcester, for example, ‘expects the end of the world about nine years hence.’ While the theology of Oxford is being mentioned, the zeal of Dr. Miller, Regius Professor of Greek, must not be forgotten. The learned Professor endeavoured to convert, and even ‘writ a Letter to Mrs. Bracegirdle, giving her great encomiums (as having himself been often to see plays acted whilst they continued here) upon account of her excellent qualifications, and persuading her to give over this loose way of living, and betake herself to such a kind of life as was more innocent, and would gain her more credit.’ The Professor’s advice was wasted on ‘Bracegirdle the brown.’
Politics were naturally much discussed in these doubtful years, when the Stuarts, it was thought, had still a chance to win their own again. In 1706, Tom says, ‘The great health now is “The Cube of Three,” which is the number 27, i.e. the number of the protesting Lords.’ The University was most devoted, as far as drinking toasts constitutes loyalty. In Hearne’s common-place book is carefully copied out this ‘Scotch Health to K. J.’:
‘He’s o’er the seas and far awa’,
He’s o’er the seas and far awa’;
Altho’ his back be at the wa
’We’ll drink his health that’s far awa’.’
The words live, and ring strangely out of that dusty past. The song survives the throne, and sounds pathetically, somehow, as one has heard it chanted, in days as dead as the year 1711, at suppers that seem as ancient almost as the festivities of Thomas Hearne. It is not unpleasant to remember that the people who sang could also fight, and spilt their blood as well as their ‘edifying port.’ If the Southern ‘honest men’ had possessed hearts for anything but tippling, the history of England would have been different.
When ‘the allyes and the French fought a bloudy battle near Mons’ (1709, ‘Malplaquet’), the Oxford honest men, like Colonel Henry Esmond, thought ‘there was not any the least reason of bragging.’ The young King of England, under the character of the Chevalier St. George, ‘shewed abundance of undaunted courage and resolution, led up his troups with unspeakable bravery, appeared in the utmost dangers, and at last was wounded.’ Marlborough’s victories were sneered at, his new palace of Blenheim was said to be not only ill-built, but haunted by signs of evil omen.
It was not always safe to say what one thought about politics at Oxford. One Mr. A. going to one Mr. Tonson, a barber, put the barber and his wife in a ferment (they being rascally Whigs) by maintaining that the hereditary right was in the P. of W. Tonson laid information against the gentleman; ‘which may be a warning to honest men not to enter into topicks of this nature with barbers.’ One would not willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her Majesty’s Ministers with the person who shaves one. There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on the temper was evident in this, that ‘the Mohocks are all of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines leading thus to all manner of barbarity and inhumanity.’ So true is it that Conservatives are all lovers of peace and quiet, that (May 29th, 1715) ‘last night a good part of the Presbyterian meeting-house in Oxford was pulled down. The people ran up and down the streets, crying, King James the Third! The true king! No Usurper. In the evening they pulled a good part of the Quakers’ and Anabaptists’ meeting-houses down. The heads of houses have represented that it was begun by the Whiggs.’ Probably the heads of houses reasoned on à priori principles when they arrived at this remarkable conclusion.
In consequence of the honesty, frankness, and consistency of his opinions, Mr. Hearne ran his head in danger when King George came to the throne, which has ever since been happily settled in the possession of the Hanoverian line. A Mr. Urry, a Non-juror, had to warn him, saying, ‘Do you not know that they have a mind to hang you if they can, and that you have many enemies who are very ready to do it?’ In spite of this, Hearne, in his diaries, still calls George I. the Duke of Brunswick, and the Whigs, ‘that fanatical crew.’ John, Duke of Marlborough, he styles ‘that villain the Duke.’ We have had enough, perhaps, of Oxford politics, which were not much more prejudiced in the days of the Duke than in those of Mr. Gladstone. Hearne’s allusions to the contemporary state of buildings and of college manners are often rather instructive. In All Souls the Whigs had a feast on the day of King Charles’s martyrdom. They had a dinner dressed of woodcock, ‘whose heads they cut off, in contempt of the memory of the blessed martyr.’ These men were ‘low Churchmen, more shame to them.’ The All Souls men had already given up the custom of wandering about the College on the night of January 14th, with sticks and poles, in quest of the mallard. That ‘swopping’ bird, still justly respected, was thought, for many ages, to linger in the college of which he is the protector. But now all hope of recovering him alive is lost, and it is reserved for the excavator of the future to marvel over the fossil bones of the ‘swopping, swopping mallard.’
As an example of the paganism of Queen Anne’s reign – quite a different thing from the ‘Neo-paganism’ which now causes so much anxiety to the moral press-man – let us note the affecting instance of Geffery Ammon. ‘He was a merry companion, and his conversation was much courted.’ Geffery had but little sense of religion. He is now buried on the west side of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret’s well. Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he came that way; an injunction which was punctually complied with.
Oxford lost in Hearne’s time many of her old buildings. It is said, with a dreadful appearance of truth, that Oxford is now to lose some of the few that are left. Corpus and Merton, if they are not belied, mean to pull down the old houses opposite Merton, halls and houses consecrated to the memory of Antony Wood, and to build lecture-rooms and houses for married dons on the site. The topic, for one who is especially bound to pray for Merton (and who now does so with unusual fervour), is most painful. A view of the ‘proposed new buildings,’ in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy (1879), depresses the soul. In the same spirit Hearne says (March 28th, 1671), ‘It always grieves me when I go through Queen’s College, to see the ruins of the old chapell next to High Street, the area of which now lies open (the building being most of it pulled down) and trampled upon by dogs, etc., as if the ground had never been consecrated. Nor do the Queen’s Coll. people take any care, but rather laught at it when ’tis mentioned.’ In 1722 ‘the famous postern-gate called the Turl Gate’ (a corruption for Thorold Gate) was ‘pulled down by one Dr. Walker, who lived by it, and pretended that it was a detriment to his house. As long ago as 1705, they had pulled down the building of Peckwater quadrangle, in Ch. Ch.’ Queen’s also ‘pulled down the old refectory, which was on the west side of the old quadrangle, and was a fine old structure that I used to admire much.’ It appears that the College was also anxious to pull down the chamber of King Henry V. This is a strange craze for destruction, that some time ago endangered the beautiful library of Merton, a place where one can fancy that Chaucer or Wyclif may have studied. Oxford will soon have little left of the beauty and antiquity of Patey’s Quad in Merton, as represented in our illustration. What the next generation will think of the multitudinous new buildings, it is not hard to conjecture. Imitative experiments, without style or fancy in structure or decoration, and often more than medievally uncomfortable, they will seem but evidences of Oxford’s love of destruction. People of Hearne’s way of thinking, people who respect antiquity, protest in vain, and, like Hearne, must be content sadly to enjoy what is left of grace and dignity. He died before Oxford had quite become the Oxford of Gibbon’s autobiography.
CHAPTER VII
GEORGIAN OXFORD
Oxford has usually been described either by her lovers or her malcontents. She has suffered the extremes of filial ingratitude and affection. There is something in the place that makes all her children either adore or detest her; and it is difficult, indeed, to pick out the truth concerning her past social condition from the satires and the encomiums. Nor is it easy to say what qualities in Oxford, and what answering characteristics in any of her sons, will beget the favourable or the unfavourable verdict. Gibbon, one might have thought, saw the sunny, and Johnson the shady, side of the University. With youth, and wealth, and liberty, with a set of three beautiful rooms in that ‘stately pile, the new building of Magdalen College,’ Gibbon found nothing in Oxford to please him – nothing to admire, nothing to love. From his poor and lofty rooms in Pembroke Gate-tower the hypochondriac Johnson – rugged, anxious, and conscious of his great unemployed power – looked down on a much more pleasant Oxford, on a city and on schools that he never ceased to regard with affection. This contrast is found in the opinions of our contemporaries. One man will pass his time in sneering at his tutors and his companions, in turning listlessly from study to study, in following false tendencies, and picking up scraps of knowledge which he despises, and in later life he will detest his University. There are wiser and more successful students, who yet bear away a grudge against the stately mother of us all, that so easily can disregard our petty spleens and ungrateful rancour. Mr. Lowe’s most bitter congratulatory addresses to the ‘happy Civil Engineers,’ and his unkindest cuts at ancient history, and at the old philosophies which ‘on Argive heights divinely sung,’ move her not at all. Meanwhile, the majority of men are more kindly compact, and have more natural affections, and on them the memory of their earliest friendships, and of that beautiful environment which Oxford gave to their years of youth, is not wholly wasted.
There are more Johnsons, happily, in this matter, than Gibbons. There is little need to repeat the familiar story of Johnson’s life at Pembroke. He went up in the October term of 1728, being then nineteen years of age, and already full of that wide and miscellaneous classical reading which the Oxford course, then as now, somewhat discouraged. ‘His figure and manner appeared strange’ to the company in which he found himself; and when he broke silence it was with a quotation from Macrobius. To his tutor’s lectures, as a later poet says, ‘with freshman zeal he went’; but his zeal did not last out the discovery that the tutor was ‘a heavy man,’ and the fact that there was ‘sliding on Christ Church Meadow.’ Have any of the artists who repeat, with perseverance, the most famous scenes in the Doctor’s life – drawn him sliding on Christ Church meadows, sliding in these worn and clouted shoes of his, and with that figure which even the exercise of skating could not have made ‘swan-like,’ to quote the young lady in ‘Pickwick’? Johnson was ‘sconced’ in the sum of twopence for cutting lecture; and it is rather curious that the amount of the fine was the same four hundred years earlier, when Master Stoke, of Catte Hall (whose career we touched on in the second of these sketches), deserted his lessons. It was when he was thus sconced that Johnson made that reply which Boswell preserves ‘as a specimen of the antithetical character of his wit’ – ‘Sir, you have sconced me twopence for non-attendance on a lecture not worth a penny.’
Sconcing seems to have been the penalty for offences very various in degree. ‘A young fellow of Balliol College having, upon some discontent, cut his throat very dangerously, the master of his College sent his servitor to the buttery-book to sconce him five shillings; and,’ says the Doctor, ‘tell him that the next time he cuts his throat I’ll sconce him ten!’ This prosaic punishment might perhaps deter some Werthers from playing with edged tools.
From Boswell’s meagre account of Johnson’s Oxford career we gather some facts which supplement the description of Gibbon. The future historian went into residence twenty-three years after Johnson departed without taking his degree. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner, and was permitted by the easy discipline of Magdalen to behave just as he pleased. He ‘eloped,’ as he says, from Oxford, as often as he chose, and went up to town, where he was by no means the ideal of ‘the Manly Oxonian in London.’ The fellows of Magdalen, possessing a revenue which private avarice might easily have raised to £30,000, took no interest in their pupils. Gibbon’s tutor read a few Latin plays with his pupil, in a style of dry and literal translation. The other fellows, less conscientious, passed their lives in tippling and tattling, discussing the ‘Oxford Toasts,’ and drinking other toasts to the king over the water. ‘Some duties,’ says Gibbon, ‘may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars,’ but ‘the velvet cap was the cap of liberty,’ and the gentleman commoner consulted only his own pleasure. Johnson was a poor scholar, and on him duties were imposed. He was requested to write an ode on the Gunpowder Plot, and Boswell thinks ‘his vivacity and imagination must have produced something fine.’ He neglected, however, with his usual indolence, this opportunity of producing something fine. Another exercise imposed on the poor was the translation of Mr. Pope’s ‘Messiah,’ in which the young Pembroke man succeeded so well that, by Mr. Pope’s own generous confession, future ages would doubt whether the English or the Latin piece was the original. Johnson complained that no man could be properly inspired by the Pembroke ‘coll,’ or college beer, which was then commonly drunk by undergraduates, still guiltless of Rhine wines, and of collecting Chinese monsters.
Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetæ
Ingenium jubeas purior baustus alat.
In spite of the muddy beer, the poverty, and the ‘bitterness mistaken for frolic,’ with which Johnson entertained the other undergraduates round Pembroke gate, he never ceased to respect his college. ‘His love and regard for Pembroke he entertained to the last,’ while of his old tutor he said, ‘a man who becomes Jorden’s pupil becomes his son.’ Gibbon’s sneer is a foil to Johnson’s kindliness. ‘I applaud the filial piety which it is impossible for me to imitate.. To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligations, and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother.’
Johnson was a man who could take the rough with the smooth, and, to judge by all accounts, the Oxford of the earlier half of the eighteenth century was excessively rough. Manners were rather primitive: a big fire burned in the centre of Balliol Hall, and round this fire, one night in every year, it is said that all the world was welcome to a feast of ale and bread and cheese. Every guest paid his shot by singing a song or telling a story; and one can fancy Johnson sharing in this barbaric hospitality. ‘What learning can they have who are destitute of all principles of civil behaviour?’ says a writer from whose journal (printed in 1746) Southey has made some extracts. The diarist was a Puritan of the old leaven, who visited Oxford shortly before Johnson’s period, and who speaks of ‘a power of gross darkness that may be felt constantly prevailing in that place of wisdom and of subtlety, but not of God.. In this wicked place the scholars are the rudest, most giddy, and unruly rabble, and most mischievous.’ But this strange and unfriendly critic was a Nonconformist, in times when good Churchmen showed their piety by wrecking chapels and ‘rabbling’ ministers. In our days only the Davenport Brothers and similar professors of strange creeds suffer from the manly piety of the undergraduates.
Of all the carping, cross-grained, scandal-loving, Whiggish assailants of Alma Mater, the author of Terræ Filius was the most persistent. The first little volume which contains the numbers of this bi-weekly periodical (printed for R. Franklin, under Tom’s Coffee-house, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, MDCCXXVI.) is not at all rare, and is well worth a desultory reading. What strikes one most in Terræ Filius is the religious discontent of the bilious author. One thinks, foolishly of course, of even Georgian Whigs as orthodox men, at least in their undergraduate days. The mere aspect of Mr. Leslie Stephen’s work on the philosophers of the eighteenth century is enough to banish this pleasing delusion. The Deists and Freethinkers had their followers in Johnson’s day among the undergraduates, though scepticism, like Whiggery, was unpopular, and might be punished. Johnson says, that when he was a boy he was a lax talker, rather than a lax thinker, against religion; ‘but lax talking against religion at Oxford would not be suffered.’ The author of Terræ Filius, however, never omits a chance of sneering at our faith, and at the Church of England as by law established. In his description of the exercises of the Club of Wits, only one respectably clever epigram is quoted, beginning, —
‘Since in religion all men disagree,
And some one God believe, some thirty, and some three.’
This production ‘was voted heretical,’ and burned by the hands of the small-beer drawer, while the author was expelled. In the author’s advice to freshmen, he gives a not uninteresting sketch of these rudimentary creatures. The chrysalis, as described by the preacher of a University sermon, ‘never, in his wildest moments, dreamed of being a butterfly’; but the public schoolboy of the last century sometimes came up in what he conceived to be gorgeous attire. ‘I observe, in the first place, that you no sooner shake off the authority of the birch but you affect to distinguish yourselves from your dirty school-fellows by a new drugget, a pair of prim ruffles, a new bob-wig, and a brazen-hilted sword.’ As soon as they arrived in Oxford, these youths were hospitably received ‘amongst a parcel of honest, merry fellows, who think themselves obliged, in honour and common civility, to make you damnable drunk, and carry you, as they call it, a CORPSE to bed.’ When this period of jollity is ended, the freshman must declare his views. He must see that he is in the fashion; ‘and let your declarations be, that you are Churchmen, and that you believe as the Church believes. For instance, you have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles; but never venture to explain the sense in which you subscribed them, because there are various senses; so many, indeed, that scarce two men understand them in the same, and no true Churchman in that which the words bear, and in that which they were written.’
This is pretty plain speaking, and Terræ Filius enforces, by an historical example, the dangers of even political freethought. In 1714 the Constitution Club kept King George’s birthday. The Constitutional Party was then the name which the Whigs took to themselves, though, thanks to the advance of civilisation, the Tories have fallen back upon the same. The Conservative undergraduates attacked the club, sallying forth from their Jacobite stronghold in Brasenose (as seen in our illustration), where the ‘silly statue,’ as Hearne calls it, was about that time erected. The Whigs took refuge in Oriel, the Tories assaulted the gates, and an Oriel man, firing out of his window, wounded a gownsman of Brasenose. The Tories, ‘under terror of this dangerous and unexpected resistance, retreated from Oriel.’ Yet such was the academic strength of the Jacobites and the Churchmen, that a Freethinker, or a ‘Constitutioner,’ could scarcely take his degree.
Terræ Filius, who lashes the dons for covetousness, greed, dissipation, rudeness, and stupidity, often corroborates the Puritan’s report about the bad manners of the undergraduates. Yet Oxford, then as now, did not lack her exquisites, and her admirers of the fair. Terræ Filius thus describes a ‘smart,’ as these dandies were called – Mr. Frippery:
‘He is one of those who come in their academical undress, every morning between ten and eleven, to Lyne’s Coffee-house; after which he takes a turn or two upon the park, or under Merton Wall, whilst the dull regulars are at dinner in their hall, according to statute; about one he dines alone in his chamber upon a boiled chicken or some pettitoes; after which he allows himself an hour at least to dress in, to make his afternoon’s appearance at Lyne’s; from whence he adjourns to Hamilton’s about five; from whence (after strutting about the room for a while, and drinking a dram of citron), he goes to chapel, to show how genteelly he dresses, and how well he can chaunt. After prayers he drinks tea with some celebrated toast, and then waits upon her to Magdalen Grove or Paradise Garden, and back again. He seldom eats any supper, and never reads anything but novels and romances.’
The dress of this hero and his friends must have made the streets more gay than do the bright-coloured flannel coats of our boating men.
‘He is easily distinguished by a stiff silk gown, which rustles in the wind as he struts along; a flax tie-wig, or sometimes a long natural one, which reaches down below his [well, say below his waist]; a broad bully-cock’d hat, or a square cap of about twice the usual size; white stockings; thin Spanish leather shoes. His clothes lined with tawdry silk, and his shirt ruffled down the bosom as well as at the wrists.’
These ‘smarts’ cut no such gallant figure when they first arrived in Oxford, with their fathers (rusty old country farmers), in linsey-woolsey coats, greasy, sun-burnt heads of hair, clouted shoes, yarn stockings, flapping hats, with silver hatbands, and long muslin neck-cloths run with red at the bottom.
