“In the course of this work particular care will be taken that nothing be inserted indecent or immoral, and as we are determined to give umbrage to no Person or Party, all political disputes and whatever is offensive to Good Manners will of consequence be avoided. Our design being only to promote learning in general, we shall not confine ourselves to any particular subject, but occasionally comprehend all the branches of polite literature. Each number will consist of such originals in Prose and Verse as we hope will prove agreeable to our readers. And tho’ we might with impunity comply with the common practice of preying indiscriminately on the labours of others, yet we shall not to our knowledge publish any thing that has been printed before, or without the consent of the respective authors: for the one we consider as a fraud upon the publick, and the other an invasion of private property. These considerations we presume will remove any prejudice which the Learned may conceive against our undertaking, and induce them not only to encourage, but assist us in the prosecution of it. And as we must necessarily depend on the publick for the Success of our work, we hope it will meet with their indulgence. No endeavours on our part shall be wanting to render it worthy their approbation; and we no longer desire their favour, than while we continue to deserve it.” In the first number there were some five or six pages of Latin verse, a translation of the chorus at the end of the second act of _Hecuba of Euripides_, an elegy in imitation of Tibullus, an article on “Intellectual Pleasure”--the author of which was requested, in an editorial note, to favour the paper with his further reflections--the speech of John Fell, D.D., Bishop of Oxford, at his Triennial Visitation in the year 1685, an article entitled “Leaning of no Party,” and one or two lighter imaginative contributions, such as “The Speech of an Old Oak to an Extravagant Young Heir as He was going to be Cut Down,” and an “Address to an Elbow Chair Lately New Cloath’d.” As there were no advertisements to assist the editors with the printing bills, it speaks well for the literary taste of the period that the paper lived two full years--the period to which the editors limited themselves at the outset. Such a periodical at Oxford in the year of grace 1911 would prove to be a hopeless anachronism. It would arrive at a circulation of three copies per month--a free copy to the British Museum, another to the Bodleian, and the third to the editor’s mother. The Undergraduates might finger it casually on the bookshop counter, and the Dons read the first number on account of its novelty, but it would die a speedy death unless by the second issue the editor announced its coalition with the comic paper whose editor runs his motor-car on the earnings of butcher and express messenger boys.