It is amazing to think how many men there are in this year of grace nineteen hundred and eleven who, if they should take it into their heads to keep a diary, would have to write down page after page of exactly the same stuff, would express exactly the same sentiments about their father, and whose projects of a lasting reform would be for ever scattered by just such a careless tap upon their oak. And yet it is written: _Tempora mutantur_! _The Loiterer_ was not sold only to the local public at Oxford. It had a quite large outside circulation, with agents in London, Birmingham, Bath, and Reading, and ran for a year and three months. At the end of this period the authors, the principal ones, revealed their identity and retired from the editorial pinnacle into the comparative oblivion of their Fellowships, having cause to congratulate themselves upon no small success. CHAPTER XIII ’VARSITY LITERATURE--(_continued_) _The Oxford Packet._--_Academia: or the Humours of Oxford._--_The Oxford Act._--_The Oxford Sausage._--Present and latter day literature summed up. There were many other minor literary outputs which made their appearance from time to time through the century, but it would be tedious to analyse all of them. The outstanding ones were _The Oxford Packet_, _Academia: or the Humours of Oxford_, _The Oxford Act_, Tom Warton’s fighting poem entitled _The Triumph of Isis_, and _The Oxford Sausage_. _The Oxford Packet_ was a purely topical piece of writing containing heated articles on the burning questions of the moment in Oxford. It was published in London, “printed for J. Roberts in 1714,” with a list of contents including “(1) News from Magdalene College (Sacheverell’s Inscription on a piece of plate); (2) Antigamus: or a Satire against Marriage, written by Mr Thomas Sawyer; (3) A Vindication of the _Oxford_ Ladies, wherein are displayed the amours of some Gentlemen of _All Souls_ and _St John’s Colleges_.” _Academia_, perpetrated by a woman, Alicia d’Anvers, ridiculed the manners and customs of the university in a pointed and quite scurrilous manner. It lived up to its sub-title, however, for it was an extremely humorous piece of work. In 1733 there appeared the _The Oxford Act_, a ballad opera. A crude and unamusing play, it is nevertheless interesting as containing the germ of modern musical comedy. The idea of the piece was to satirise university politics, but the lack of construction and the laboured manner in which the dramatist introduced his songs and manœuvred his characters makes it tedious and rather difficult to appreciate. _The Triumph of Isis_ was occasioned by a denunciation of Oxford by a Cambridge man, William Mason, who was guilty of a poem entitled _Isis_. In it he taunted Oxford upon the degeneracy of her sons who “... madly bold To Freedom’s foes infernal orgies hold.”