He is said to have lodged in Frewen Hall, only a small portion of which is left. Its entrance is a pretty little gateway, at the end of Frewen Court, a narrow passage on the west side of the present Cornmarket Street, running towards New Inn Hall Street, and just beyond the house of the Union Society. Frewen Hall is known now only as the Oxford residence, during his undergraduate life, of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, a student who will soon be entirely forgotten, except as a King of Great Britain; while Erasmus, concerning whom Oxford knows and cares almost nothing, will live almost forever.
In his "Praise of Folly" Erasmus speaks of the Grammar Teachers of the Middle Ages, particularly in Oxford, as a "race of men the most miserable, who grow old in penury and filth in their schools (—schools did I say? prisons, dungeons! I should have said) among their boys, deafened with din, poisoned by a fetid atmosphere; but, thanks to their folly, perfectly self-satisfied, so long as they can bawl and shout to their terrified boys, and box, and beat, and flog them; and so indulge, in all kinds of ways, their cruel dispositions." Thus, in the days of Erasmus, was the twig bent, and applied, in the formation of the common mind.
Jeremy Taylor was a native, and a student, of
