OXFORD EPIGRAMS.
[TO T1111 EDITOR OP THB " BPROPLTOR.1 Sin,—Some sallies ascribed to a Bursar of Worcester College half-a-century ago have recently occurred to me. Seeing a strange lady in the act of picking flowers in the Worcester gardens, he accosted her with ready wit : " Madam, the flowers of Worcester are examined, not plucked." At a College dinner his health was proposed next to that of the Iron Duke, who was then Chancellor. In returning thanks, he gracefully acknowledged the honour which bad been so unexpectedly thrust upon him. " But, after all," he added, "it is perhaps not unfitting that after the hero of a hundred fights should follow the hero of a hundred battles ! " For the benefit of the non-academic reader, I will explain that the word " battels " is applied to the weekly bills of resident members of a College. I am not sure whether it was the same " sayer of odd things," as Macaulay would have styled him, who, when ruffled by the effort to carve a tough goose, passed off his irritation with a Latin joke : " It is only a soft anser that turneth away wrath." Some years ago it was proposed to furnish a number of University dignitaries with keys of some institution, perhaps the Bodleian Library. I cannot recall the particulars of the scheme ; but the point is that its opponents called it "the many-keyan [Manichean] [A propos of the flowers, was it not Dean Mansel who remarked of Bishop Field Flowers Goe, then a Freshman: " He deserves to be ploughed for the first part of his name, and plucked for the second" P—En. Spectator.]
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