EARLY LIVES OF THE POETS
111
that Dr. Kettel’s braine was like a hasty-pudding where there was memorie, judgement, and phancy all stirred together. If you had to doe with him, taking him for a foole, you would have found in him great subtilty and reach: è contra, if you treated with him as a wise man, you would have mistaken him for a foole…. He observed that the howses that had the smallest beer had most drunkards, for it forced them to goe into the town to comfort their stomachs: wherefore Dr. Kettle alwayes had in his College excellent beer, not better to be had in Oxon; so that we could not goe to any other place but for the worse, and we had the fewest drunkards of any howse in Oxford…. He was irreconcileable to long haire; called them hairy scalpes, and as for periwigges (which were then very rarely worne) he beleeved them to be the scalpes of men cutt off after they were hang’d, and so tanned and dressed for use. When he observed the scholars’ haire longer than ordinary (especially if they were scholars of the howse), he would bring a paire of cizers in his muffe (which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch…. He dragg’d with one (i. e. right) foot a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattle-snake) of his comeing…. He preach’t every Sunday at his parsonage at Garsington (about 5 miles off). He rode on his bay gelding, with his boy Ralph before him, with a leg of mutton (commonly) and some colledge bread. He did not care for the country revells, because they tended to debauchery. Sayd he, at Garsington revell, Here is Hey for Garsington! and Hey Hockly! but here’s nobody cries, Hey for God Almighty!… ’Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer, and finisht his century, had not those civill wars come on: which much grieved him, that was wont to be absolute in the colledge, to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers…. His dayes were shortned, and dyed (July) anno Domini 1643, and was buried at Garsington: quaere his epitaph.
The abundant human sympathy that takes delight in all these passing incidents and trivial characteristics is
