OXFORD EPIGRAMS.
[To TRY EDITOR or TRY " SPECTATOR"] SIB, I am glad to confirm the incident related by my friend Mr. Bond in the Spectator of February 4th as regards the late
Dean Mansel, and this causes me to offer you another epigram and anecdote for your collection as illustrating the late Dean's ready wit. The question before the University was what should constitute residence during Term time for a Professor ; and "pernoctation" for so many nights was suggested. Hanel wrote :— " A double service our Professors do : Inform the mind, and form the manners too. Thus Oxford needs their presence day and night, And leavened by a R****s grows polite."
Mansel's impromptus often were given by him under his breath and almost in a whisper. A friend of mine driving with him near Oxford remarked, on seeing a donkey struggling to withdraw its head from a hedge in which it had been caught: "That donkey will be strangled soon if it does not get loose!" " Don't you think," said Manse! under his
breath, " that it is a case of asphyxia P "—I am, Sir, &c.,
EDWARD CHAPMAN.
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