With such a condition of things it is not very remarkable that the literature of the time should be characterised by coarseness of language and ideas. Its humour was of the riper kind which permitted of no possible misunderstanding. Many of the jokes printed in such periodicals as the _Oxford Journal_ and the _Oxford Magazine_--both papers in high repute which circulated among Dons, Undergraduates and residents--would be quite unprintable to-day even in the most yellow of the sporting papers. The pen of Amhurst was hampered by no considerations of delicacy or modesty. Whatever he felt on any subject that he wrote, boldly and without mincing, and the fact that his articles were read with interest and delight by male and female alike is proof that there is no blame attaching to him for scurrility. He was merely in the period. There are also instances of women who wrote with almost the same degree of frankness as did Alicia d’Anvers, who had, as I have shown, an immodesty of style unique in the entire century. She satirised all the manners, customs, hobbies and vices of the university with flagrant lack of good taste which, judging by the characteristics of the time, made her poem a great success. In the eighteenth century there were neither advertisements--except in the _Oxford Journal_, and they were few in number--nor athletic fixtures. The editors, therefore, had to rely entirely upon the merits of the articles printed in their paper. Their sole hope of life lay in circulation, and as they had not then discovered such “adventitious aids” as idols and open letters, they were forced to do their utmost to make their paper bright and readable. That they did so is obvious from the great number of contributors who sent in articles regularly, and that, too, without any hope of payment.