“MY LADS,--I am so well acquainted with the variety and malapertness of you sparks, as soon as you get out of your schoolmaster’s hands, that I know I shall be called a fusty old fellow, and a thousand ridiculous names besides, for presuming to give advice, which I would not, say you, take, if I was a young fellow myself. But being a very public-spirited person, and a great well wisher to my fellow subjects (whatever you may think of me) I am resolved, whether you mind what I am going to say, or not, to lay you down some rules and precautions for your conduct in the university, on the strict observation or neglect of which your future good or ill fortune will depend; and, I am sure that you will thank me, six or seven years hence, for this piece of service, however troublesome and impertinent you may think it now.... “I observe, in the first place, that you no sooner shake off the authority of the birch, but you affect to distinguish yourselves from your dirty school-fellows by a new suit of drugget, a pair of prim ruffles, a new bob wig, and a brazen-hilted sword; in which tawdry manner you strut about town for a week or two before you go to College, giving your selves airs in coffee-houses and booksellers’ shops, and intruding your selves into the company of us men; from all which, I suppose you think your selves your own master, no more subject to controul or confinement--alas! fatal mistake! soon will you confess that the tyrrany of a school is nothing to the tyrrany of a college; nor the grammar-pedant to the academical one; for, what signifies a smarting back-side to a bullied conscience? What was Busby in comparison to D-e-l-ne? “And now, young gentlemen, give me leave to put on my magisterial face, and to instruct you how you are to demean yourselves in the station you are entered into, and what sort of behaviour is expected from you, according to the oaths and these subscriptions. “I know very well that you go thither prepossessed with a sanguine (but ignorant) opinion, that you are to hold fast your principles, whatever they are; that you are to follow, what in your conscience you think right, and to desclaim what you think wrong, that this is the only way to thrive in the world, and to be happy in the next, just as your silly mothers and superstitious old nurses have taught you: in the first place, therefore, I advise you to disengage your selves from all such scrupulous notions; for you may take my word for it, that otherwise it is a million to one that you miscarry.