As it was, however, those very collections which exhibit Hearne’s peculiar genius show us at the same time how impossible, even granting the supposition to be not altogether anachronistic, a regular University ’News-letter’ would have been. We talk now in a vague and, perhaps, rather unintelligible fashion of ’University politics,’ and in some way contrive to identify Gladstonianism with a susceptibility to the claims of a school of English literature, or whatever is the latest phrase of progress--mixing up internal legislation with the external politics of the great world. But in Hearne’s time there were no University politics to discuss. ’Their toasts,’ says Gibbon of the Fellows of Magdalen College, ’were not expressive of the most lively loyalty to the House of Hanover,’ and Hearne’s interest in politics has nothing to do with the Hebdomadal Council. When he speaks of ’our white-liver’d Professor, Dr. ----,’ or describes the highest official in the University as ’old Smooth-boots, the Vice-Chancellor,’ it is generally for the very sufficient reason that the person in question is what Dr. Johnson called a ’vile Whig.’ But Tory politics and common-room scandal and jobbery apart, the University would appear to have slept the sleep of the unjust. ’Terrae Filius’ grumbles at the corrupt method of ’examination,’ and ’The Student’ is lively and satirical on the peccadilloes and escapades of various members of society. But your prose essayist is apt to be intermittent, and the publication that relies mainly on him leans on a breaking reed; so that we can hardly be surprised that the last-named periodical should eke out its pages with imitations of Tibullus, to the first of which the Editor appends the encouraging note, ’If this is approved by the publick, the Author will occasionally oblige us with more _Elegies_ in the same style and manner.’