Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge ScholarsGooch, Richard
History
Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars
Gooch, Richard
University of Cambridge -- Anecdotes; University of Oxford -- Anecdotes
When Robert the Devil was first produced at Paris, and the opera going
folk were on the _qui vive_ for the promised appearance of the Prince
of Darkness, a certain Cantab, the facial line of whose countenance
bordered on the _demoniacal_, went to see him make his bow to a
Parisian audience, and happened to enter the same _loge_ from whence
a Parisian belle was anxiously watching the _entrée_ of Monsieur Le
Robert. Attracted by the creaking of the _loge_ door, on suddenly
turning her head in its direction, she caught a glimpse of our
Cambridge friend, and was so forcibly struck with the expression of
his countenance, that she went into hysterics, exclaiming, "Mon Dieu!
Le Diable!"
* * * * *
SOME CRITICAL CIVILITIES.
The famous editor of Demosthenes, John Taylor, D.D. being accused of
saying Bishop Warburton was no scholar, denied it, but owned he always
thought so. Upon this Warburton called him "The Learned Dunce." When
Parr, in the British Critic for 1795, called Porson "a giant in
literature," and "a prodigy in intellect," the Professor took it in
dudgeon, and said, "_What right has any one to tell the height of a
man he cannot measure?_" A Dutch commentator having called Bentley
"Egregius" and "[Greek: Ho panu]," "What right, (said the Doctor) has
that fellow to quote me; "_does he think that I will set my pearls in
his dunghill_?" Baxter, in the second edition of his Horace, said the
great Bentley seemed to him "rather to have buried Horace under a heap
of rubbish than to have illustrated him." And
BENTLEY SAID OF JOSHUA BARNES,
Who, to please his religious wife, composed a Greek ode to prove King
Solomon wrote Homer's Iliad, that he was
"[Greek: Honos pros lyran]--_Asinus ad Lyram_:"
Joshua replied, that they who said this of him had not understanding
enough to be poets, or wanted the [Greek: Ho nous pros lyran].
* * * * *
SIR BUSICK AND SIR ISAAC AGAIN.
I have before spoken of these two Cambridge knights and rival
physicians, but there yet remains to be told of them, that on their
meeting each other, perchance, in the street or the senate house, the
latter addressing his rival in an ironical speech of condolence, to
the effect, "I regret to hear you are ill, Sir Busick." "Sir, _I
sick_!" (Sir Isaac) retorted the wit, "I never was better in my life!"
Many of my readers have no doubt seen the anecdote of Voltaire's
building a church, and causing to be engraved on the front thereof,
the vain record,
"_Voltaire erexit hoc Templum Deo_."
A similar spirit seized a Mr. COLE of Cambridge, who left money either
to erect the church or the steeple of St. Clement's, in Bridge-street,
of that town, on condition that his name was placed on the front of
it. The condition was complied with to the letter, thus, by the
tasteful judgment of some Cambridge wag:--
COLE: DEUM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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