thing about the singing of birds, Wakefield abruptly silenced him with this happy allusion to the Laureat's name, in the following nursery rhymes: "And when the pie was opened, The birds began to sing: And was not this a dainty dish THE CAMBRIDGE FAMILY OF SPINTEXTS Begun with John Alcock, LL.D., Bishop of Ely, and founder of Jesus College. "Garrulus hunc quando consumet cunq; loquaces, In 1483, says Wilson, in his Memorabilia Cantabrigiæ, 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 Coffeehouse," 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: "Three Preachers, in three distant counties born, Whilst Marsh himself, who scarce could further go, This punning morsel, of some standing in the university, is scarce surpassed by Hood himself:— THE THREE-HEADED PRIEST. Old Doctor Delve, a scribbling quiz, By turns assumes the various phiz Though now with high erected head, He once made lawyers' robes, 'tis said, Last night I asked the man to sup, On Sunday, arrogant and proud, And reads the Word of God so loud, He must be Theo-pompus. 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 1833, 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 "The humble petition of the ladies, who are all ready to be eaten up with the spleen, To think they are to be cooped up in the Chancel, where they can neither see nor be seen, But must sit in the dumps by themselves, all stew'd and pent up, And can only peep through the lattice, like so many chickens in a coop; |