digito male pertinaci.--_Hor_.
[39]Shade of Boileau! (who told in deathless lays
A choral pulpit's military praise,)
Thou, too, that dared'st a cloister'd warfare sing,
And dip thy bucket in Castalia's spring!
Forgive, blest bards, if, with unequal fire,
I feebly strike the imitative lyre;
Though strong to celebrate no vulgar fray,
Since P----t and conquest swell the exulting lay.
Not link'd, alas in friendship's sacred band,
With hands fast lock'd the furious parsons stand;
Each grasps the whip with unrelenting might--
The whip, the cause and guerdon of the fight--
But either warrior spends his strength in vain,
And panting draws his lengthen'd breath with pain,
Till now the Dean, with throat extended wide,
And faltering shout, for speedy succour cried
[40]To them who in yon grateful cell repose,
Where Greenland odours feast the stranger's nose--
"Scouts, porters, shoe-blacks, whatsoe'er your trade,
All, all, attend, your master's fist to aid!"
They heard his voice, and, trembling at the sound,
The half-breech'd legions swarm'd like moths around;
But, ah! the half-breech'd legions, call'd in vain,
Dismay'd and useless, fill'd the cumber'd plain;
And while for servile aid the Doctor calls,
[41]By P----t subverted, prone to earth he sprawls.
[42]E'en then were heard, so Brazenose students sing,
The grass-plot chains in boding notes to ring;
E'en then we mark'd, where, gleaming through the night,
Aerial crosses shed a lurid light.
Those wrestlers, too, whom naked we behold
Through many a summer's night and winter's cold,
Now changed appear'd, his pristine languor fled,
Expiring Abel raised his sinking head,
While with fix'd eyes his murderer seemed to stand,
The bone half dropping from his nerveless hand.
So, when of old, as Latian records tell,
At Pompey's base the laurel'd despot fell,
Reviving freedom mock'd her sinking foe,
And demons shriek'd as Brutus dealt the blow.
His trencher-bonnet tumbling from his crown,
Subdued by Bernard, sunk the Doctor down;
But yet, though breathless on the hostile plain,
The whip he could not seize he snapt in twain--
"Where now, base themester,"--P----t exulting said,
And waved the rattling fragments o'er his head--
"Where now thy threats? Yet learn from me to know
How glorious 'tis to spare a fallen foe.
Uncudgel'd, rise--yet hear my high command--
[43]Hence to thy room! or dread thy conqueror's hand."
[44]His hair all gravel, and all green his clothes,
In doleful dumps the downcast Doctor rose,
Then slunk unpitied from the hated plain,
And inly groaning sought his couch again;
Yet, as he went, he backward cast his view,
And bade his ancient power a last adieu.
So, when some sturdy swain through miry roads
A grunting porker to the market goads,
With twisted neck, splash'd hide, and progress slow,
Oft backward looks the swine, and half disdains to go.
"Ah me! how fallen," with choaking sobs he said,
And sunk exhausted on his welcome bed;
"Ere yet my shame, wide-circling through the town,
Spreads from the strong contagion of the gown,
Oh! be it mine, unknowing and unknown,
[45]With deans deceased, to sleep beneath the stone."
As tearful thus, and half convulsed with spite,
He lengthen'd out with plaints the livelong night,
At that still hour of night, when dreams are oft'nest true,
A well-known spectre rose before his view,
As in some lake, when hush'd in every breeze,
The bending ape his form reflected sees,[46]
Such and so like the Doctor's angel shone,
And by his gait the guardian sprite was known,
Benignly bending o'er his aching head--
"Sleep, Henry, sleep, my best beloved," he said,[47]
"Soft dreams of bliss shall soothe thy midnight hour;
Connubial transport and collegiate power.
Fly fast, ye months, till Henry shall receive
The joys a bride and benefice can give.
But first to sanction thy prophetic name,
In yon tall pile a doctor's honours claim;[48]
E'en now methinks the awe-struck crowd behold
Thy powder'd caxon and thy cane of gold.
E'en now--but hark! the chimney sparrows sing,
St Mary's chimes their early matins ring--
I go--but thou----through many a festive night
Collegiate bards shall chant thy luckless fight--
Though many a jest shall spread the table round,
And many a bowl to B----r----d's health be crown'd--
O'er juniors still maintain thy dread command,
Still boast, my son, thy cross-compelling hand.[49]
Adieu!"--His shadowy robes the phantom spread,
And o'er the Doctor drowsy influence shed;
Scared at the sound, far off his terrors flew,
And love and hope once more his curtains drew.
[Footnote 18: In the quadrangle of Brazenose College, there is a statue
of Cain destroying Abel with a bone, or some such instrument. It is of
lead, and _white-washed_, and no doubt that those who have heard that
Cain was struck black, will be surprised to find that in Brazenose he is
white as innocence.]
[Footnote 19: All the world has rung with the fame of Roger Bacon,
formerly of this college, and of his exploits in astrology, chemistry,
and metallurgy, _inter alia_ his brazen head, of which alone the nose
remains, a precious relic, and (to use the words of the excellent author
of the _Oxford Guide_) still conspicuous over the portal, where it
erects itself as a symbolical illustration of the Salernian adage
"Noscitur a naso."]
[Footnote 20: Two medallions of Alfred and Erigena ornament the outside
of the Hall, so as to overlook the field of battle.]
[Footnote 21: The Porter of the college.]
[Footnote 22: The doctor's servant or scout.]
[Footnote 23: Two wine-merchants residing in Oxford.]
[Footnote 24: To those gentlemen who, for half an hour together, have
sometimes had the honour of waiting in the Doctor's antechamber, "Donec
libeat vigilare tyranno," this passage will need no explanation; and of
his acts of graceful dignity and unaffected piety at chapel, perhaps the
less that is said the better.]
[Footnote 25: It was a Rosicrucian tenet, that the demon was assimilated
to the object of his care; and in this we are confirmed by the authority
of the Doctor himself, who treated very largely on the subject of demons
in his lecture on Plato's Phædon. The powers of his mind were never more
successfully displayed than when he illustrated his positions by the
scriptural instance of the two Galilean demoniacs, who abode in the
tombs night and day. It was reserved for his ingenuity and learning to
discover that those unfortunate Bedlamites were not mortals, but
departed spirits.]
[Footnote 26: The real friend of collegiate discipline, whose feelings
our author would blush to offend, will be pleased to recollect that this
deviation from the usual dinner hour took place in the long vacation;
that it was introduced for the convenience of study, and that the
doctor, could he so far have forgotten his dignity as to have joined the
four o'clock party, would have found decorous manners, and more than one
brother fellow of the company.]
[Footnote 27: Wisely was it ordained by our founders, that, young men
being too apt to laugh in their sleeves at the conduct of their
superiors, the academical dress of the under-graduates should, as far as
possible, obviate that inconvenience. Thus, also, Tully hath it, "Cedant
arma togæ."]
[Footnote 28: The two founders of Brazenose College.]
[Footnote 29: It is necessary to explain to non-academic readers, that
it is customary for the tutor of a college to put an X opposite the name
of an offending member in the Buttery Book, as it is called, by which he
is interdicted from having bread buttered, a kind of excommunication.]
[Footnote 30: For the meaning of this expression we refer the reader to
the most preposterous imposition ever known in the annals of collegiate
punishment; the original MS. of which is preserved in the museum of an
eminent collector in Kent. In short, as in Cambridge they sell their
butter by the yard, so at Brazenose the cloth measure has been applied
with singular success to the works of genius; and perhaps the system may
be so far improved upon, that a future under-graduate may have to toil
through a _furlong_ of Strabo, or a _perch_ of logic.]
[Footnote 31: This alludes to the hobbling gait of the Doctor, in
consequence of the defect in his foot.]
[Footnote 32: The Rev. B----d P----t.]
[Footnote 33: Alluding to a notorious malefactor, executed about this
times and hung in chains on Wimbledon Common.]
[Footnote 34: Prophetically spoken, as the Doctor was then only a junior
fellow.]
[Footnote 35: The Doctor, finding that Horace prescribed a nine years'
delay for play or poem, inferred that more than twice that time was
necessary for the learned labours of the editor of Strabo.]
[Footnote 36: For the wonderful answers of the learned cuckoo, at logic
lecture, we refer to his (the cuckoo's) equally edified class-fellows.]
[Footnote 37: The reader will perhaps be astonished to find, that the
Doctor as supposed to flatter himself with the hope that his attentions
were not altogether unacceptable to a young lady of singular elegance
and personal accomplishments, here alluded to.]
[Footnote 38: "Obscoenæque volucres signa dabant."]
[Footnote 39: The poet invokes his heroi-comic predecessors, the author
of the _Lutrin_, and Alessandro Tassoni, whose _Secchia Rapita_, or Rape
of the Bucket, is well known to the amateurs of Italian poetry.]
[Footnote 40: No classical stranger could ever pass the porter in his
lodge at Brazenose, without being sensibly reminded of a favourite
passage in Horace, and exclaiming,
"Quis multà gracilis--puer in rosâ,
Perfusus liquidis--odoribus
Grato----sub antro."
]
[Footnote 41: "Procumbit humi bos." This is not the first time the
Doctor has been overcome by _port_.]
[Footnote 42:
"Hine exaudiri gemitus, et sæva sonare
Verbera, tum stridor ferri tractæque catenæ."
]
[Footnote 43: With great practical justice and classical elegance, the
words of the assailant are retorted upon himself--
"Suo sibi gladio hunc jugulo."
]
[Footnote 44: The _boulevérsement_ is supposed to have happened on the
green adjoining the gravel.]
[Footnote 45: Dead deans, broken bottles, dilapidated lantherns,
under-graduated ladders, and other lumber, have generally found their
level under the pavement of Brazenose cloisters.]
[Footnote 46: Like Virgil's nightingale or owl--
"Ferali carmine bubo
Flet noctem."
]
[Footnote 47: "Post mediam visus noctem cum somnia vera."]
[Footnote 48: We have heard it whispered, but cannot undertake to vouch
for the truth of the rumour, that a considerable wager now depends upon
the accomplishment of this prophecy within nine calendar months after
the Doctor has obtained a _bona fide_ degree.]
[Footnote 49: Alluding to the collegiate punishment before explained.]
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