[10] Spencer, whose college disappointments forced him from the University. Milton is reported to have received corporal punishment there. Dryden has left a testimony, in a prologue spoken at Oxford, much against his own University. The incivility, not to give it a harsher appellation, which Gray met with, is well known. That Alma Mater has not remitted her wonted illiberality, is to be fairly presumed from a passage in her late most poetical son, Mr. Mason: Science there Sat musing; and to those that loved the lore Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involved In geometric symbols, scorning those Perchance too much, who woo’d the thriftless Muse. English Garden. [11] See Lysons’s Environs, vol. ii. p. 148 et seq. [12] The forwardness of the clergy to publish their labours is thus ludicrously satyrized by Robert Burton: “Had I written divinitie positively, there be so many bookes in that kinde, so many commentators, treatises, pamphlets, sermons, expositions, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them: and had I beene as forward and ambitious as some others, I might haply have printed a sermon at Paules Crosse, a sermon in Saint Maries Oxon, a sermon in Christ-Church, or a sermon before the Right Honourable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, without, a sermon, a sermon, &c.” Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 15. fol. 1632. [13] Harl. MSS. No. 7000. Cabala, p. 220. fol. 1663. [14] On the 26th of August. [15] It occurs, with some variations, in a scarce poetical miscellany called Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658, the use of which, in common with many other volumes of still greater rarity and value, I owe to the liberality of Thomas Hill, esq. [16] MS. Ashmole, A 37. [17] Martis, 27 Aug. 1605. “The comedy began between nine and ten, and ended at one; the name of it was Alba, whereof I never saw reason; it was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King’s College in Cambridge. In the acting thereof they brought in five or six men almost naked, which were much disliked by the queen and ladies, and also many rustical songes and dances, which made it very tedious, insomuch that if the chancellors of bothe the Universities had not intreated his majesty earnestly, he would have been gone before half the comedy had been ended.” Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. p. 637. edit. 1770. Mercurii, 28 Aug. 1605. “After supper, about nine of the clock, they began to act the tragedy of Ajax Flagellifer, _wherein the stage varied three times_; they had all goodly antique apparell; but, for all that, it was not so well acted by many degrees as I have seen it in Cambridge. _The king_ was very weary before he came thither, but much more wearied by it, and _spoke many words of dislike_.” Ibid. p. 639.