OXFORD LETTER

On a professor & a novellist

MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS

GOOD BROTHER LONDIN1ENSIS

The news that you send me, viz: that your silly London gazette the Times has publickly declared me to be none other than our worthy Regius Professor of History, has diverted us in Oxon no less hugely than you in London, all men recognising at once both the impossibility and the absurdity of it. Which whether it were done to exasperate him or me, or to breed trouble betwixt us, I can assure you that it has signally failed; for that professor and I, chancing to meet of late at the ordinary, forgot our mutual! differences (which have been sharp enough, he having much resented my late tart observations upon him) and made merry together over this exquisite new piece of folly.

You ask me how it could come about that Master Rees-Mogg, the editor of that gazette, who is otherwise a prudent and scholar-like man, could publish so egregious an error. My answer is that assuredly 'twas a trick played upon him by one Master Auberon Waugh, a scurrile scribbler who was until lately employed by Master Lawson of the SPECTATOR; but having been very pro- perly dismissed by him for gross im- pertinency (which decency forbids me to particularise), he has now found service under Master Rees-Mogg and is neglecting no occasion to take his revenge upon his late patron. He has even sought means to cut him out in his own fief; for Master Lawson being ambitious to serve the Commonwealth in parliament as burgess for the borough of Slough (a romancy seat: see Sir J. Bet- jeman's delicate poeme thereon), this Master Waugh, though of the same party in the state, is now busily writing against him, and even threatening to promote a candidate to challenge him at the poll—not in hopes to win over the major part of the electors (which were impossible), but solely to seduce some of the sillier of them and so to open a way to their common adversary Mistress Lestor; which shows to what lengths the spirit of revenge will carry a man, if he be not well grounded in the principles of true religion.

Moreover, 'tis not to be forgot that this Master Waugh may pretend grounds for seeking revenge not only upon Master Lawson, as his former patron who has discarded him, but also upon the Regius Pro- fessor himself, as an hereditary enemy of his house. For you must know that this Master Auberon Waugh is the son of that ingeniose novellist and incomparable witt, the late Master Evelyn Waugh, betwixt whom and our professor there was some difference, of long standing: which difference was bred originally, as it seems, by discrepancy of religion, though afterwards quicken'd by publick controversy; for as the novelist used to mix much gall in his ink, so the historian could ply, at times, a sharp-pointed quill. Of this antient difference I will now advertise you, so that this whole new affair may be cleerly understood.

You must know then, first of all, that whereas our worthy professor (though of an antient recusant family, but long since reclaimed) has always been a sound pro- testant and a loyall member of the true church established by law amongst us, that

late novellist moved in a clean contrary direction : for although bred up in the same true church, he was afterwards perverted from its wholesome doctrines and became a papist—and that of so precise and zealous a kind that successive popes and all their cardinalls must pant hard to keep up with him in the nicer points of observance; after which perversion his rare witt became incrassated and the sparkle of his novels was sadly dimm'd.

The evangelist who performed this favour for him and received him into that church Was none other than that dexterous angler for souls, Fr Martin D'Arcy e soc. lesu (hap- pily still with us), who, being then Master of Campion Hall, a Jesuit seminary in Oxon, did by his gawdy lures and epicurean baits (for he was marvellous hospitable) land, and serve up to his master the pope, one or two noble gudgeon (quaere whether my lord Longford not one of them), although some other stout fish brake his line and got away: as, e.g., my lord ... (but such names are not for paper).

Now our novellist, being thus firmly hook'd, did afterwards resolve, as a grateful proselyte, to offer to his ghostly confessor the fast-fruit of his newly sanctified labours. He therefore dash'd off a panegyricall ac- compt of the eponymous hero of that seminary, viz: Master Edmund Campion: a simple Jesuit who, with a more subtile com- panion, one Master Persons, came over from beyond seas, anno 1580 or thereabouts, to seduce Her Majesty's subjects from their allegiance; but being sniff'd out and caught, he afterwards suffered the extream penalties of treason. Which book, though insipid enough to the taste of us protestants, and sadly lacking in historicall substance and ex- actitude (see the excellent witty notice of it the late Mistress Rose Macaulay in Master Connolly's late broadsheet Horizon), nevertheless, being prettily trick'd out for its purpose and laid at Master D'Arcy's feet, was at once pick'd up by the papists (or at least by such of them as hang around the Jesuit church of Farm-street in Mayfair) and, being by them cry'd up as a work of rare genius, etc, etc, bred many imitations; so that by now there is scarce one of those forty martyrs (as we must now call 'em) but has his encomium, and the present bishop of Rome, to satisfy those Jesuits (who push very hard) as well as to divert attention from his own domestick difficulties (celibacy, the pill, etc etc), is fain to canonise the whole caboodle of 'em.

Howbeit. our grave Regius Professor, being of a different mind, did not join in this devout chorus of popish flibbertigibbets. On the contrary, he was so rash as to touch lightly (but in another sense) on the same matter; which he did more than once, somewhat pungently, and especially in an essay entituled `Twice Martyr'd', which be has since reprinted in his volume of Historical! Essays, publish'd anno 1957; whereby he incurred the wrath of all those

Mayfair papists, so that they made waxen images of him, and stuck pins into them, uttering fierce incantations, and cry'd out

against him at their symposiack meetings, threatening to put rat-poyson in his port- wine, etc., and would have had him removed

altogether out of Oxon (had their conjuring any effect) as a corrupter of the young and a danger to faith and moralls. This con- troversy continued merrily for some years and, both parties being egg'd on by their friends, caused much diversion to the pro- fane.

Now 'tis easy to suppose that this young sprig Master Auberon Waugh, having been bred up at that time and in that family, and being (as we must suppose) a young man of exemplary piety, both in his religion (however defective) and towards his late parent, has sucked in some of the warm air thus engended; of which, by now, he must naturally wish to ease himself by evacuation. And this, together with his animosity against poor Master Lawson, I verily believe to be the whole cause of this praeposterous error into which Master Rees-Mogg (a trusting soul) has allowed himself to fall in publickly confounding together two such opposites as myself and the Regius Professor; which con- fusion can only cast yet further discredit on his gazette and pay him back for his im- prudence in recruiting for it such a boutefeu as this Master Auberon Waugh. But as such an error by him can never mislead any ra- tionall man, I will say no more of it, but subscribe myself

Your loving brother to serve you, MERCURIUS OXONIENS1S