Rowlandson's Oxford

-CENTURY FRESH

arning the Oxford manner-Homunculi Togati-Academia and a mother's love-The jovial fath

efore they can read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. As the process was vastly different in Georgian times, it is interesting to read the varying accounts of eighteenth-century fre

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Christ Church, I was too foppish a follower of the prevailing fashions to be a reverential observer of academical dress-in truth, I was an egregious little puppy-and I was presented to the Vice-Chancellor, to be matriculated, in a grass-green coat, with the furiously-bepowder'd pate of an ultra-coxcomb; both of which are proscribed by the Statutes of the University. Much courtesy is shown, in the ceremony of matriculation, to the boys who come from Eton and

ignorance-the Tutor (a piece of sham marble) did not blush at a

tack'd to the patronymick of an English gentleman of my age and appearance, would rather be a redundant formality. There was too much delicacy in the worthy Doctor's satire for my green co

tedious business which the Vice-Chancellor hurried through with all speed. One man performed his part in a condition of semi-intoxication without an inkling of the meaning of the oaths to which he subscribed, while another wa

r more anxious not to contravene the unwritten laws of the Undergraduate world. Once the tiresome but necessary matriculation became a thing of the past, he began to look about him, anxiously at first from the desire to avoid grievous blunders which would make him a laughing-stock. All initiative was far too dangerous when the lynx eyes of the entire college wer

arrived at

learning and

leer about,

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his Father,

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lmost servile politeness he went to the extreme of

we decline to bow the neck to convention, and declare for originality and freedom, society turns and rends us. At Oxford the punishment for such a crime as originality is swift. A horde of outraged seniors descends like an avalanche

inevitable. The freshman undoubtedly realised the truth of this, however vaguely, and conducted himself according to the rules laid down by

e discipline. This early Lord of the Creation is so inflated with the importance of virility, that his pretension to it is carefully kept up in almost every sentence he utters. He never mentions any one of his associates but as a gentlemanly or a pleasant man-a studious man, a dashing man, a drinking man, etc., etc.-and the Homunculi Togati of Sixteen always talk of themselves as Christ Chu

ite points of view. The mother, with regulation anxiety, conceived him to be a hardly-used, homesick, half-starved

tender'd by

m better tha

me a good wh

th, and Canar

Noddle's so

uffed with Swee

a well-stuffed hamper for her boy and fond messages as to his health, he went down to the servants' hall and, planting himself in front of the returned messenger, asked "If's Son has got a Punck yet Whor

h one window, through which could be obtained a minute view of sky and stars, and which was ice-cold in winter and in summer stuffy to a degree. However large the college there were always more men in residence than could be properly housed. Colman said of the House, one of the biggest colleges in Oxford, that it "was so completely cramm'd, that shelving garrets, and even unwholesome cellars, were inhabited by young gentleme

experience, to the scurvy tricks which the scouts and bedmakers played upon the long-suffering fresher. "My two mercenaries," he wrote, "having to do with a perfect greenhorn, laid in all the articles for me which I wanted-wine,

demnably. "I was glad," he said, writing of his first night in Oxford, "on retiring early to rest, that I might ruminate, for five minutes, over the important events of the day, before I fell fast asleep. I was not, then, in the habit of using a night-lamp or burning a rush-light; so, having dropt the extinguisher upon my candle, I got into bed; and found, to my dismay, that I was reclining in the dark upon a surface very like that of a pond in a hard frost. The jade of a bedmaker had spread the spick and span sheeting over the blankets, fresh from the linen-draper's shop-unwash'd, uniron'd, unair'd, 'with all its imperfections on its head.' Through the tedious hours

that the towel was in an even worse state of hardness than the sheets; while at breakfast the tablecloth was so stiff that he dreaded to sit down to his meal because he feared to cut his shins against the edge of it. With intent, doubtless, to add humiliation to injury, the old hag had also left his surplice in a state of pristine unwashedness, so that "cased in this linen panoply, which covers him from his

f him or of the things to expect. Without a twinge of nervousness he signed his name to long-winded oaths, and unconsciously perjured himself five minutes later. Everywhere he saw strange faces, met with new and incomprehensible experiences, and found himself doing the wrong thing. With undaunted cheerfulness, however, he allowed Oxford to treat him as she chose, to mould him to her own liking, to pull him this way and that, until eventually, with an increased optimism, his schoolboy corners were rounded off, and he became one with Oxford. It was his very lack of experience which enabled hi