Orford Memories. By the Rev. James Pyoroft. (Bentley and Son.)—
It ie unfortunate for these two large volumes that they should have appeared jest before Sir Francis Doyle's mnob more interesting book. These memories ought never to have appeared at all in their present shape. The whole of the Oxford memories, properly so called, might have been compressed into a email duodecimo, instead of two large octavo volumes. The bulk of the book consists of cricket reminia- cences—Mr. Pyoroft many years ago wrote a fairly successful book on " The Cricket-Field"—scattered over the whole period of fifty years of retrospect which, we are informed on the title-page, separate the author from his Oxford days. With the exception of some strings of names, they have little or nothing to do with Oxford. The Oxford memories themselves are very confused, and a good deal borrowed from other people. Such as they are, however, they may well make the present generation of Oxford men, in Homeric phrase, " boast that they are a good deal better than their fathers," including the parsons. Mr. Pycroft was at Trinity, and, to judge from his Memories, there were only two sets, " smug's" and drunkards, of whom the latter very moth predominated. The only good story in the book relating to the author's own College memories is of an event which led, according to him, to the "refonndation " of New Inn Hall—which Balliol has lately taken under it, wing—by some Trinity exiles,. When he was a freshman, Mr. Pyoroft was asked to sign a petition "for the benefit of the College." The petition recited that " whereas the then Dean, Mr. Mitchell, was in the habit of setting unusually long and very frequent impositions for missing chapel, coming in late, or other minor offences visited heretofore far more lightly, and whereas thereby the valuable time of studious men was greatly wasted, your petitioners do hereby pray" that the President would remedy the grievance. This petition produced a "common room," or general assembly of the Dons, and the signers were ordered to withdraw their signatures aed apologise. The President asked,— "What in the world could you mean by each a petition P" Whereon "our friend Charlie [there is a convenient vagueness about names through the book], who, standing nearest to the President, felt bound to say something, said,—` All I know, gentlemen, was that it was a petition. I am not in the habit of reading petitions, they are all so much alike ; but I always take the precaution of asking if there is anything to pay, but they said there was nothing to pay, and so I signed.' " All the College but four recanted, and these four took their nausea off, and went to New Inn Hall, then without a single inmate. It is not, perhaps, surprising if the College did not produce a very good set of undergraduates, considering the manners and customs of the President. According to Mr. Pycroft, when a noise was made in quad, he rushed out and found a man cracking a tandem-whip, whereon he seized it from his hand, and lathed out right and left among the assembled undergraduates. No wonder the College was a bear- garden, such as it would be impassible to find in Oxford nowadays, though the reverend author appears to think that it has sadly de- generated through the introduction on a large scale of the " com- mercial classes."
Previous page
