NOTES TO PART I. NOTE a, page 26. "Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown; consider me, I say, in this melancholy light; and then think if something be not due to yours," &c. Christ Church, Nov. 14, 1735. Such is the amusive pertness with which West, Gray's friend, alludes to this university. In another letter, he talks about "half a dozen new little procterlings."-This rebellious description of his Alma Mater is more than matched by the sarcasm of Gray, in speaking of Cambridge. "Surely it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke when he said, 'the wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance there; their forts and towers shall be a den for ever, a joy of wild asses, &c. &c.' You must know that I do not take degrees, and after this term shall have nothing more of college impertinences to undergo. I have endured lectures daily and hourly since I came last.-Must I plunge into metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; nature has not furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics? Alas! I cannot be in too much light; I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly."— LETTERS. "To Oxford,” says Gibbon, “I brought a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy might have been ashamed." Lord King, in his LIFE OF LOCKE, remarks; "That Locke regretted his education at Oxford, is stated upon the authority of his friend Le Clerc." He adds, however, "Perhaps too much stress has been laid upon some accidental expressions; or rather that the regrets expressed by Locke ought to have been understood by Le Clerc, to apply to the plan of education then generally pursued at English universities; for to Oxford, even as Oxford was in the days of Locke, he must have been considerably indebted. If the system of education did not offer assistance, or afford those directions so useful to a young student, the residence of Oxford did no doubt confer ease, leisure, and the opportunity of other studies; it afforded also the means of intercourse with persons from whose society and conversation we know that the idea of his great work arose." "Too much stress" has indeed been laid upon ebullitions of peevishness against the system pursued at our universities, which occur in the works and correspondence of a few celebrated men. With regard to Gray's opinion, it has been justly remarked, “At the time when he was admitted, Jacobitism and hard drinking prevailed still at Cambridge, much to the prejudice not only of good manners, but of good letters. But we see (as was natural enough to a young man) he laid the blame rather on the mode of education, than the mode of the times." In allusion to Gibbon's taunts, a biographer observes; "By his course of desultory reading, he seems unconsciously to have been led to that particular branch in which he was afterwards to excel. But whatsoever connexion this had with his more distant life, he was exceedingly deficient in classical learning, and went to Oxford without either the taste or preparation which could enable him to reap the advantages of academical education. This may possibly account for the harshness with which he speaks of the universities. His fourteen months at Magdalen were idle and profitless; and he describes himself as gay, and disposed to late hours.' When he sat down to write his memoirs the memoirs of an eminent and accomplished scholar-he found a blank which is seldom found in the biography of English scholars; the early display of genius, the laudable emulation, and the well-earned honours; he found that he owed no fame to his academical residence, and therefore determined that no fame should be desirable from an university EDUCATION."-Ex uno disce omnes. NOTES b, c, &c. page 27, 28. "Circ. A. M. 2855, and 1180 before Christ, Gerion and twelve more learned Greeks accompanied the conqueror Brutus * into this isle; others, * My venerated friend, Sharon Turner, pronounces the account of Brutus and his colony of Greek philosophers, to be an historical fiction. In the HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS, vol. II. p. 155-157. there is a note relative to a contest for priority of foundation, once carried on between the two great universities; but now happily lost in the nobler feeling of intellectual rivalry. As the note is interesting, no apology is offered for presenting it to the reader. "We have referred to this place a cursory review of the former discussions between Oxford and Cambridge, which have been connected with the memory of Alfred. This dispute did not burst out publicly till the reign of Elizabeth. When the queen visited Cambridge in 1564, the orator of the university unfortunately declared in his harangue, that Cambridge truly claimed a superior antiquity to Oxford. Enraged that an attempt should have been insidiously made to prepossess the ear of majesty to its prejudice, Oxford retaliated the aggression, by asserting, in a written composition to the queen when she came to the university in 1566, that it was Oxford, and Oxford only, which could truly boast the earliest foundation. "Wars, horrid wars, became then the business and the amusement of every student. Cantabs and Oxonians arranged themselves to battle; and every weapon of polemical erudition and polemical fury was raised against each other. "Caius, one of the leaders in this discussion, published a quarto, in defence of Cambridge, in 1574. He said he came to restore peace; as if, by assuring the world that Cambridge was in the right, he could ever give tranquillity to Oxford. "Oxford denied the right of an insidious partisan to be a peacemaker; and at last Bryan Twyne appeared, with a book as large and as full as that of Caius, in which the glory of Oxford was sturdily and angrily maintained. Many combatants at various intervals succeeded, and the conflict became as ardent as, from the fragility of the materials, it was ineffectual. "Some of the friends of Cambridge managed to see the first stones of their university laid in the 173rd year after the flood. Others, however, who were not blessed with optics, which had the faculty of seeing what had never been visible, very wisely postponed the existence of their favourite till about four centuries before the Christian æra. At that period, they found out that one Cantaber, a royal Spanish emigrant, who came to England in the days of Gurguntius, had sent for Greek philosophers from Athens, and given to Cambridge a local habitation and a name. "It was easy for Oxford to object, that Cantaber was but one of those airy no |