It must not be understood, however, that such orgies characterised the ceremony of matriculation. This writer of fluent doggerel was a gentleman commoner, but he seems to have caught at every lax point that he personally observed as a target for his wit. The more sober matriculation, both literally and figuratively, of George Colman the younger can be most suitably placed in the other side of the scale. “On my entrance at Oxford,” he wrote, “as a member of Christ Church, I was too foppish a follower of the prevailing fashions to be a reverential observer of academical dress--in truth, I was an egregious little puppy--and I was presented to the Vice-Chancellor, to be matriculated, in a grass-green coat, with the furiously-bepowder’d pate of an ultra-coxcomb; both of which are proscribed by the Statutes of the University. Much courtesy is shown, in the ceremony of matriculation, to the boys who come from Eton and Westminster; insomuch that they are never examined in respect to their knowledge of the School Classicks--their competency is considered as a matter of course--but, in subscribing the articles of their matriculation oaths, they sign their _praenomen_ in Latin; I wrote, therefore, _Georgeius_--thus, alas! inserting a redundant E--and, after a pause, said enquiringly to the Vice-Chancellor--looking up in his face with perfect _naiveté_--‘pray, sir, am I to add Colmanus?’ “My Terentian father, who stood at my right elbow, blush’d at my ignorance--the Tutor (a piece of sham marble) did not blush at all--but gave a Sardonick grin, as if _Scagliola_ had moved a muscle! “The good-natur’d Vice drollingly answer’d me--that the surnames of certain _profound authors_, whose comparatively modern works were extant, had been latinized; but that a Roman termination tack’d to the patronymick of an English gentleman of my age and appearance, would rather be a redundant formality. There was too much delicacy in the worthy Doctor’s satire for my green comprehension--and I walk’d back, unconscious of it, to my College--strutting along in the pride of my unstatutable curls and coat, and practically breaking my oath, the moment I had taken it.” From both their accounts, differing so widely from each other, it would seem that the ceremony of matriculation, which to-day is conducted with an almost ecclesiastical solemnity, was in those days simply a matter of form, a tedious business which the Vice-Chancellor hurried through with all speed. One man performed his part in a condition of semi-intoxication without an inkling of the meaning of the oaths to which he subscribed, while another was presented to the Vice-Chancellor in clothes more suitable to a fancy dress ball than to his formal admittance to the university. Neither man drew upon himself the reprimand which to-day would immediately be levelled at him.