Now, the Rev. Mr Hodgett, sedate and dignified as he was, had better have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging nettles, or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest, or amused himself with any other innocent recreation, than have made an enemy of John Brown. It was what he himself would have called a wrong move, and it played the deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him, and he did. None of us knew he had so much ingenuity, or so much malice in his composition, until he commenced his hostilities against the dean. The fact was, he was more piqued, perhaps, than any other man in college would have been by so small a matter. Too sensible to be really ashamed of being the son of a man in trade, he was conscious, nevertheless, that it was in some sort a disadvantage to him, and that, descended as he was from an old and once knightly line, (his father had been an ill-used younger son,) he did not quite occupy his proper position in the world. His feeling of this made him sensitive to a fault; it led him rather to shun than to seek the society of his contemporaries; and much as he was esteemed by myself and others who knew him well, I will not say that he was a universal favourite. Men did not understand him: at that time of life (alas, why not always?) most of us are open and free-hearted; they did not relish his shy and reserved manner, his unwillingness to take the initiative in any social intercourse, his _exigeance_ to a certain extent of those forms which the freedom of college friendship is apt to neglect. "Why didn't you turn into my rooms the other night, when you came in from Oriel?" said I to him early in our acquaintance. "Hobbs says he told you I had some men to supper."--"You didn't ask me," was the quiet reply.--"I couldn't see you, or else I should; but you might have known I wanted you; don't serve me such a trick as that again, old fellow." But it let me into a secret of his character, and ever after that, I was as particular in my invitations as possible. Men thought him proud, and cold, and touchy, which he was not; and stingy, which he scorned to be, from his contempt for ostentation in any shape. The rarity of his wine-parties, and his never having other wines produced than port or sherry, he himself explained to me--"Men would say, it was easy for me to sport claret and champagne, when I could get them for nothing." But if an unthinking freshman broke out in praise of the said excellent port or sherry, (as indeed they might well be pardoned for doing, considering the quality of what they commonly imbibed,) he would say at once--"Yes, I believe it is good; I know my father considers it so, and it has been in bottle above twelve years." There was no shirking the question for a moment. And excellent wine he got for me from his father, at a moderate price, at his own offer. Hating then, as he did undisguisedly, the tuft-hunting and affectation of _haut-ton_, which was