Hearne, a very useful writer, says that in 1705 he saw and examined a cast of Wood's head, taken in plaster of Paris, which "shows him to have been a melancholy, thoughtful man." But Hearne does not say that this face was sour, or that its expression was forbidding; nor do these traits appear, in any marked degree, in the original drawing of Wood's face, which is still preserved in the Bodleian.
Whatever became of that death-mask, unfortunately not in the Collection at Princeton University, no man now knows.
Richard Steele was matriculated at Christ Church in 1690; but he became a Postmaster of Merton the next year, when he continued to keep up his intimacy with Addison, then a "Demy" at Magdalen. Steele had some reputation as a student at Merton; and he even tried his 'prentice hand on a comedy there, which he was advised to burn. He left Oxford without a degree in 1694, to enter the army; having made no decided impression upon Oxford in any way.
Henry Edward Manning was a Fellow of Merton in 1832, but the interest of his career at Oxford centres around Balliol, where we have already seen something of him as an undergraduate.
