But good Dr. Farmer was never more in his element than when sitting in what was called "the Critics' Row" at the Playhouse specially set up during the weeks in which Stourbridge Fair held the attention of the three counties. Mention has already been made of this celebrated Fair. During the eighteenth century it was by far the largest Fair in the country. Every trade was represented, and here many of the good folk of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon, and the Isle of Ely made the principal part of their household purchases for the year. People came from London and elsewhere to be present at the opening festivities. The declaration of the Fair was a matter of University as well as civic ceremonial. The Vice-Chancellor and the other University officers, attended by the noblemen and other notables, drove to the Fair, which was duly proclaimed by the Registrary of the University. The Senior Proctor provided cakes and wine at the Senate House before starting. To the University dignitaries and their guests was set apart a certain Tiled Booth, where they dined. The menu at the Vice-Chancellor's table never varied. It consisted of a large dish of herrings, a neck of pork roasted, a plum pudding, a leg of pork boiled, a pease pudding, a goose, and a huge apple pie, while a round of beef graced the centre of the board. Before the end of the century this dinner had degenerated into a sort of oyster luncheon. During this and the Midsummer or "Pot" Fair there was a deal of drunken and riotous behaviour not confined, alas! to the townsfolk or the peasant classes. It is reported that tipsy Masters of Arts, many Fellows of Colleges, and clergymen were to be seen with linked arms jostling the passers-by. To read but this side of University history one might suppose an academy in which such things were possible would hardly be able to claim to have done much for learning during this period. But Cambridge was no worse as a school for manners than was any other place of education at this time; while the period is one to which we look back to-day as the age of Newton, Bentley, and Person,--names which alone are sufficient to raise the University into the first place as a seat of learning. The poets, Prior, Gray, Coleridge, and Wordsworth had their education in Cambridge before the century closed. So also did Laurence Sterne. Halifax, the two Walpoles, Lord Camden, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Bathurst, Lord Thurloe, Pitt the younger, Castlereagh, Wilberforce, Denman were some of the illustrious Cambridge men who found places in the great world of that day; while Paley and Charles Simeon were prominent in the religious life of the time.