Lord Shaftesbury was a freshman at Exeter in 1636; and the story told by his biographer is, that he organised a resistance among his fellow freshmen to the practice, and that a row took place in the college hall, which led to the interference of the master, Dr. Prideaux, and to the abolition of the practice in Exeter College. The custom is there said to have been of great antiquity in the college. The authority cited by Mr. Martyn for the story is a Mr. Stringer, who was a confidential friend of Lord Shaftesbury's, and made collections for a Life of him; and it probably comes from Lord Shaftesbury himself. C. _Byron and Tacitus_.--Although Byron is, by our school rules, a forbidden author, I sometimes contrive to indulge myself in reading his works by stealth. Among the passages that have struck my (boyish) fancy is the couplet in "_The Bride of Abydos_" (line 912),-- "Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease! He makes a solitude, and calls it--peace!" Engaged this morning in a more legitimate study, that of Tacitus, I stumbled upon this passage in the speech of Galgacus (Ag. xxx.),-- "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem adpellant." Does not this look very much like what we call "cabbaging?" If you think so, by adding it to the other plagiarisms of the same author, noted in some of your former numbers, you will confer a great honour on A SCHOOLBOY. _The Pardonere and Frere_.--If Mr. J.P. Collier would, at some leisure moment, forward, for your pages, a complete list of the variations from the original, in Smeeton's reprint of _The Pardonere and Frere_, he would confer a favour which would be duly appreciated by the possessors of that rare tract, small as their number must be; since, in my copy (once in the library of Thomas Jolley, Esq.), there is an autograph attestation by Mr. Rodd, that "there were no more than twenty copies printed." G.A.S. _Mistake in Gibbon_ (No. 21. p. 341.).--The passage in Gibbon has an error more interesting than the mere mistake of the author. That a senator should make a motion to be repeated and chanted by the rest, would be rather a strange thing; but the tumultuous acclamations chanted by the senators as parodies of those in praise of Commodus, which had been usual at the Theatres (Dio), were one thing; the vote or decree itself, which follows, is another.