THE OXFORD TRADESMAN _The Student’s_ opinion of one--A Tradesman’s poem and its result--Dodging the dun--Debt and its penalties--Tradesmen’s taste in literature--Advertising and _The Loiterer_--Tick--Dr Newton, innkeeper--Amhurst’s confession--Fathers and trainers of toasts. Like Nemesis, the Oxford tradesman has sooner or later to be reckoned with. His methods are, and for that matter always were, rather spider-like. He sets out a beautiful and enticing web in his shop window, and sits placidly in the darkness of his back parlour to await results. One after another the Undergraduates, foolish flies, dash in; and then, when they have been given sufficient time--a year or so--the spider pounces and demands his just, but frequently exorbitant, dues. Sometimes he does not get them. Spiders, however, rarely come in for any sympathy. The old-time Oxford tradesman was undoubtedly a man of parts. In all the periodicals of the time are to be found odes, couplets, and prose-writings all singing his praise. He constituted a factor of importance in the daily routine of eighteenth-century life. It must, indeed, have been a sick Smart who did not visit daily his barber and _perruquier_, his horse-dealer, his tobacco merchant, his mercer and tailor, his coffee-house. These worthy townsmen seem to have been, in fact, the sole _raison d’être_ of the Smart’s university career, and their pseudo erudition and quite exceptional powers were the cause of an enthusiastic article from the pen of _The Student_. “A tradesman of Oxford,” he wrote, “is no more like another common tradesman than some collegians are like other men ... the very sign-posts express their taste for learning and superiour education. Our mercers, milliners, taylors, etc., etc., have shewn their nice judgments in the art of designing, by the many curious emblematical devices that so eminently adorn the entrances to their shops. How sublime are the signs of our innkeepers! the Angel, the Cross, the Mitre, the Maidenhead, with many others, are too well known to need mentioning. A tooth drawer amongst us denotes his occupation by an excellent poetical distich; a second with great propriety stiles himself operator for the teeth: and my printer who sells James’s fever powder, Greenough’s tinctures, Hoopers’ female pills, and the like, exhibits to our view in large golden letters over his door the pompous denomination of Medicinal Warehouse. Nor are we at all surprised to see written in this learned university, tho’ over a female bookseller’s door, ‘BIBLIOPOLIUM MARIAE,’ etc. “Not to dwell too minutely on externals, every tradesman with us is a mathematician, or philosopher, or divine, or critick, and what not? But they are all to a man particularly famous for their skill in arithmetick. For my own part I never dealt with one yet who was not thoroughly practised in addition and multiplication.