The Oxford graduate of the past is far too pale a ghost in literature. He lies in old books, like a broken sculpture waiting to be reconstructed, and survives but in an anecdote and from his importance after leaving Oxford for a bishopric or a civil place. For one memory of a Don there are a hundred of soldiers, statesmen, priests, in the quadrangles and streets. He is in danger of being treated as merely the writer of a quaint page among the records of the college muniment-room. Erasmus, Fuller, Wood, Tom Warton, preserve and partly reveal the spirit of the past, and help us to call up something of the lusty, vivid life which the fellows and canons and presidents led in their “days of nature.” There is, for example, a Dean of Christ Church, afterwards Bishop of Oxford and last of Norwich, who has still the breath of life in him, on John Aubrey’s page. I He was “very facetious and a good fellow,” and Ben Jonson’s friend. When a Master of Arts, if not a Bachelor of Divinity, he was often merry at a good ale parlour in Friar Bacon’s study, that welcomed Pepys and stood till 1779. It was rumoured that the building would fall if a more learned man than Bacon entered, a mischance of which the Dean had no fear. When he was a Doctor of Divinity “he sang ballads at the Cross at Abingdon on a market-day.” The usual ballad-singer could not compete with such a rival, and complained that he sold no ballads. Whereat “the jolly Doctor put off his gown and put on the ballad-singer’s leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and had a rare full voice,” he had a great audience and a great sale of sheets. His conversation was “extreme pleasant.” He and Dr. Stubbinge, a corpulent Canon of Christ Church, were riding in a dirty lane, when the coach was overturned. “Dr. Stubbinge,” said the Dean, “was up to his elbows in mud, but I was up to the elbows in Stubbinge.” He was a verse-maker, of considerable reputation, of some wit and abundant mirth, with a quaint looking backward upon old places and old times that is almost pathetic in these verses:-- Farewell rewards and fairies, Good housewives now may say, For now foul sluts in dairies Do fare as well as they. And though they sweep their hearths no less Than maids were wont to do, Yet who of late for cleanliness Finds sixpence in her shoe? Lament, lament, old abbeys, The fairies’ lost command; They did but change priests’ babies, But some have changed your land; And all your children sprung from thence Are now grown Puritans; Who live as changelings ever since, For love of your domains.