Life at Oxford has many advantages. Of course our London friends tell us that we are mere provincials, but that is a relative expression, and, anyhow, we enjoy life in peace. It is true we have not shaken off the regular society dinners altogether, but no one is offended if his friends tell him that they are too busy to dine out. And we still have our pleasant small dinners or luncheons of four, six, at the utmost eight people, when you can really see and enjoy your friends, and not only roast beef and port. In former years, when I first came to Oxford, it was different, but then the evil was chiefly confined to heads of colleges and halls, and there were even then exceptions, where you dined to meet a few friends, and not simply to lay in food. One of my earliest dinners I remember at Oxford was to meet Thackeray. Thackeray was then writing “Esmond,” and a Mr. Stoddard—a fellow of St. John’s College—asked me to meet him at dinner. We were only four, and we were all very much awed by Thackeray’s presence, particularly I, not being able as yet to express myself freely in English. We sat silent for some time, no one ventured to make the first remark, the soup was over, and there was a fine John Doré on the table waiting to be splayed. We were hoping for some brilliant sally from Thackeray, but nothing came. At last Thackeray suddenly turned his large spectacled eyes on me and said: “Are you going to eat your own ancestor?” I stared, everybody else stared. At last we gave it up, and Thackeray, looking very grave and learned, said: “Surely you are the son of the Dorian Müller—the Müller who wrote that awfully learned book on the Dorians; and was not John Doré the ancestor of all the Dorians?” There was a general, “Oh, oh!” but the ice was broken, and no one after this horrible pun was afraid of saying anything. All I could tell Thackeray was that I was not the son of Otfried Müller, who wrote on the Dorians, but of Wilhelm Müller, the poet, who wrote “Die Homerische Vorschule,” and “Die Schöne Müllerin,” and as to John Doré being our ancestor, how could that be? The original John Doré, so I have been told, was _il Janitore_, that is, St. Peter, and had no wife, as some people will have it, or at least never acknowledged her in public, though he was kind to his mother-in-law. All this did not promise well, yet the rest of our little dinner party was very successful; it became noisy and even brilliant.