and all went home delighted with an exhibition upon which nobody would have ventured, in such a place, but himself. But to gratify and amuse others was ever the source of the greatest satisfaction to him." This was one of those early displays of that spirit of enterprise which was so gloriously developed in his subsequent wanderings through the dreary regions of the north, over the classic shores of mouldering Greece, of Egypt, and of Palestine, the scenes of which, and their effects upon his vivid imagination and sanguine spirit, he has so admirably depicted in his writings. This eminent traveller used to say, that the old proverb, "WITH TOO MANY IRONS IN THE FIRE SOME MUST BURN," "Was a lie." Use poker, tongs, shovel, and all,-only keep them all stirring, was his creed. Few had the сараcity of keeping them so effectually stirring as he had. Nature seemed to have moulded him, head and heart, to be in a degree a contradiction to the wise saws of experience. THREE BLUE BEANS IN A BLADDER. Dr. Bentley said of our celebrated Cambridge Professor, Joshua Barnes, that "he knew about as much Greek as an Athenian blacksmith," but he was certainly no ordinary scholar, and few have excelled him in his tact at throwing off "trifles light as air" in that language, of which his following version of three blue beans in a bladder is a sample: Τρεις κυαμοι ενι κυστίδι κυανέηφια Equal to this is the following spondaic on THE THREE UNIVERSITY BEDELS, By Kit Smart, who well deserved, though Dr. Johnson denied him, a place in his British Poets. He possessed great wit and sprightliness of conversation, which would readily flow off in extemporaneous verse, says Dyer, and the three university bedels all happening to be fat men, he thus immortalized them: "Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina Bedellorum." (Three bedels sound, with paunches fat and round.) NO SCHOLAR IN EUROPE UNDERSTOOD THEM It is recorded of another Cambridge Clarke, the Rev. John, who was successively head-master of the grammar schools of Skipton, Beverley, and Wakefield in Yorkshire, and obtained the honourable epithet of "The good schoolmaster"—that when he presented himself to our great critic, Dr. Richard Bentley, at Trinity College, Cambridge, for admission, the Doctor proceeded to examine him, as is usual, and placed before him a page of the Greek text, with the Scholia, for the purpose. "He explained the whole," says his memorialist, Dr. Zouch, "with the utmost perspicuity, elegance and ease. Dr. Bentley immediately presented him with a valuable edition of the Comedies of Aristophanes, telling him, in language peculiar to himself, that no scholar in Europe understood them better, one person only excepted." Dyer has the following BENTLEIAN ANECDOTE In his Supplement, but supposes it cannot be charged upon the Doctor, "the greatest Greek scholar of his age." He is said to have set a scholar a copy of Greek verses, by way of imposition, for some offence against college discipline. Having completed his verses, he brought them to the Doctor, who had not proceeded far in examining them before he was struck with a passage, which he pronounced bad Greek. "Yet, sir," said the scholar, with submission, "I thought I had followed good authority," and taking a Pindar out of his pocket, he pointed to a similar expression. The Doctor was satisfied, but, continuing to read on, he soon found another passage, which he said was certainly bad Greek. The young man took his Pindar out of his pocket again, and showed another passage, which he had followed as his authority. The Doctor was a little nettled, but he proceeded to the end of the verses, when he observed another passage at the close, which he affirmed was not classical. "Yet Pindar," rejoined the young man, "was my authority even here," and he pointed out the place which he had closely imitated. "Get along, sir," exclaimed the Doctor, rising from his chair in a passion, "Pindar was very bold, and you are very impudent." THE GREAT GAUDY OF THE ALL-SOULS' MALLARD. This feast is annually celebrated the 14th of January, by the Society of All-Souls, in piam memoriam of their founder, the famous Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury. It is a custom at All-Souls' College (says Pointer, in his OXONIENSIS ACADEMIA,) kept up on their "mallard-night every year, in remembrance of a huge mallard or drake, found (as tradition goes) imprisoned in a gutter or drain under ground, and grown to a vast bigness, at the digging for the foundation of the college." This mallard had grown to a huge size, and was, it appears, of a great age; and to account for the longevity, he cites the Ŏrnithology of Willughby, who observes, "that he was assured by a friend of his, a person of very good credit, that his father kept a goose known to be sixty years of age, and as yet sound and lusty, and like enough to have lived many years longer, had he not been forced to kill her, for her mischievousness, worrying and destroying the young geese and goslings." "And my Lord Bacon," he adds, "in his Natural History, says, the goose may pass among the longlivers, though his food be commonly grass and such kind of nourishment, especially the wild goose; wherefore this proverb grew among the Germans, Magis senex quam Anser nivalis-Older than a wild-goose." He might also have instanced the English proverb, "As tough as a Michaelmas goose. 99 "If a goose be such a long-lived bird," observes Mr. P., "why not a duck or a drake, since I reckon they may be both ranked in the same class, though of a different species, as to their size, as a rat and a mouse? And if so, this may help to give credit to our All-Souls' mallard. However, this is certain, this mallard is the accidental occasion of a great gaudy once a-year, and great mirth, though the commemoration of their founder is the chief occasion; for on this occasion is always sung, as extant in the Oxford Sausage, the following "merry old song:" THE ALL-SOULS' MALLARD. GRIFFIN, bustard, turkey, capon, And on their bones their stomach fall hard, Oh! by the blood of King Edward, The Romans once admired a gander The poets feign Jove turned a swan, For it was a swapping, swapping MALLARD. Swapping he was from bill to eye, Therefore let us sing and dance a galliard, Oh! by the blood of King Edward, It was a swapping, swapping MALLARD. But whoever would possess themselves of the true history of the swapping mallard of All-Souls, must read the Complete Vindication of the Mallard of All-Souls," published in 1751, by Dr. Buckler, sub-warden, "a most in controvertible proof of his wit," who for that and other, his effusions, was usually styled by way of eminence, says Chalmers, in his History of Oxford, "The BUCKLER of the Mallardians." His Vindication, it is justly observed, is "one of the finest pieces of irony in our language." Of course, he is highly indignant at the "injurious suggestions of Mr. Pointer (contained in the foregoing quotations,) who insinuates, that the huge mallard was no better than a goose-a-gander, magis senex," &c.; and after citing the very words of Mr. P., he breaks out, "Thus the mallard of All-Souls, whose REMEMBRANCE has for these three centuries, been held in the highest veneration, is, by this forged hypothesis, degraded into a GOOSE, or at least, ranked in the same class with that ridiculous animal, and the whole story on which the rites and ceremonies of the mallard depends, is represented as merely traditional; more than a hint is given of the mischievousness of the bird, whatever he be; and all is founded on a pretended longevity, in support of which fiction the great names of Lord Bacon and Mr. Willughby are called in, to make the vilifying insinuation pass the more plausibly upon the world." "We live in an age (he adds,) when the most serious subjects are treated with an air of ridicule; I shall therefore set this important affair in its true light, and produce authorities "sufficient to convince the most obstinate incredulity; and first, I shall beg leave to transcribe a passage from Thomas Walsingham, (see Nicholson's Historical Library,) a monk of St. Alban's, and Regius Professor of History in that monastery, about the year 1440. This writer is well known among the historians for his Historia Brevis, written in Latin, and published both by Camden and Archbishop Parker. But the tract I am quoting is in English, and entitled, OF WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING EVENTS, and, as far as I can find, has never yet been printed. The eighth chapter of his fifth book begins thus: "Ryghte well worthie of Note is thilke famous Tale of the All-Soulen Mallarde, the whiche, because it bin acted in our Daies, and of a suretye vouched into me, I will in fewe Wordys relate. |