It is about in the proportion that Ralegh filled his life, compared with the ordinary way of living, that he took in one year out of Oxford what most men required seven years to take; for seven years was the usual time for a full course, and often, as in Germany to-day, men went from one University to another. "Ein jeder lernt das was man lernen kann Nur wer den Augenblick ergreifft das ist der rechte Mann." Not that life at the University was restrained and dull. Far from it. Listen to Thomas Lever, who spoke of the work some twenty years before Ralegh's time. "From 5 to 6 a.m. there was common prayer with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel, and from 6 to 10 either private study or common lectures. At 10 o'clock generally came dinner, most being content with a penny piece of beef amongst four. After this slender dinner the youths were either teaching or learning until 5 p.m., when they have a supper not much better than their dinner. Immediately after they went either to reasoning in problems or unto some other study until 9 or 10 of the clock, and then being without fire were fain to walk or run up and down half an hour to get a heat on their feet before they went to bed." This sounds splendidly strenuous, and shows what was expected by the authorities, and the standard of the dons to which doubtless many conformed. From Nash's trenchant pamphlets we see the other side of the picture. Thomas Lever was a preacher: Thomas Nash was not. It is while he is engaged in "pouring hot boiling ink on this contemptible Heggledepeg's barrain scalp" (or as we should put it, proving in controversy the errors of Gabriel Harvey) that he gives his sudden glimpses of life and customs in town and university. "What will you give me when I bring him uppon the Stage in one of the principallest Colledges in Cambridge? Lay anie wager with me and I will: or if you laye no wager at all, Ile fetch him aloft in Pedantius, that exquisite Comedie in Trinitie Colledge: where under the cheife part from which it tooke his name, as namely the concise and firking finicaldo fine Schoolmaster, hee was full drawen and delineated from the soale of his foot to the crowne of his head. The just manner of his phrase in his Orations and Disputations they stufft his mouth with and no Buffianism throughout his whole bookes but they bolstered out his part with ... whereupon Dick came and broke the Colledge glasse windowes and Doctor Perne (being then either for himself or Deputie Vice Chancellour) caused him to be fetcht in and set in the Stockes till the Shew was ended and a great part of the night after." This tells a less sombre tale, and when Nash begins to be scurrilous about John Harvey, the third brother, and records "the olde reakes hee kept with the wenches in Queenes Colledge Lane" (how strangely places retain their character!), the tale becomes less sombre still.