Terræ-filius: or, the Secret History of the University of Oxford/Terræ Filius No. I
Numb. I.
Terræ-Filius.
Fœnum habeo in Cornu.
Wednesday, January 11. 1721.
Gentlemen and Ladies,
It it so long since I had the honour of your company at the theatre at Oxford, that I am afraid, according to the custom on the world, you have almost forgot your old acquaintance: I will therefore, first of all, put you in mind of who I am, and for what reasons I have been thus long silent.
It has, till of late, been a custom, from time immemorial, for one of our family to mount the Rostrum at Oxford at certain seasons, and divert innumerable crowd of spectators, who flock'd thither to hear him from all parts, with a merry oration in the Fescennine manner, interspers'd with secret history, raillery, and sarcasm, as the occasions of the times supply'd him with matter.
If a venerable Head of a college was caught snug a-bed with his neighbour's wife; or shaking his elbows on a sunday morning; or flattering a prime minister for a bishoprick; or coaxing his bed-maker's girl out of her maindenhead; the boary old sinner might expect to hear of it from our lay-pulpit the next Act. Or if a celebrated toast and a young student were seen together at midnight under a shady myrtle-tree, billing like two pretty turtle-doves, to him it belong'd, being a poet as well as an orator, to tell the tender story in a melancholy ditty, adapted to pastoral musick.
Something like this jovial solemnity were the famous Saturnalian feasts amont the Romans, at which every scullion and skipkennel had liberty to tell his master his own, as the British mobility emphatically stile it. Who, said one of them, help'd Phillis the chambermaid to make the beds one day, when his lady was a visiting? Or, whose lady kiss'd Damon the butler behind a hogshead of Falernian, when her husband was hunting the boar? Or, who lost five thousand sesterces at play, and mortgaged his estate to pay it?—'Twas all water-language at these times, and no exceptions were to be taken.
I cannot indeed say, that our Oxford act agrees with the old Roman feasts in every particular; for we do not find upon record one instance of any gentleman-lacquey, who was turn'd out of doors upon this account, or met with so much as a broken head for his impertinence. An old manuscript, I confess, in the Bodleian library, takes some notice of one Cladius Snappius, an old Sabine farmer, who being jeer'd in too free a manner by one of his plowmen, replied in a pet, Why, how now, sirrah? methinks you have a good stock; and so went home in the dumps: but we read of no bloodshed, nor expulsion from his service.
Notwithstanding what some wise heads have thought to the contrary, I cannot see the great unreasonableness of such publick licences as these at particular seasons: for why should a poor undergraduate be called an idle rascal, and a good for nothing blockhead, for being perhaps but twice at chapel in one day; or for coming into college at ten or eleven a clock at night; or for a thousand other greater trifles than these; whilst the greyheaded doctors may indulge themselves in what debaucheries, and corruptions they please, with impunity, and without censure? Methinks it could not do any great hurt to the universities, if the old fellows were to be jobed at least once in four or five years for their irregularities, as the young ones are every day, if they offend.
Indeed, some of my predecessors have us'd the old gentlemen too roughly, and run their christian patience quite out of breath. One of these academical pickleherrings scurrilously affronted the learned president of St. John's college (in defiance of the statute de contumeliis compescendis) by shaking a box and dice in the theatre, and calling out to him by name, as he came in, in this manner, Jacta est alea, doctor, Seven's the main, in allusion to a scandalous report handed about by the doctors's enemies, that he was guilty of that infamous practice, and had lost great sums of other people's money at dice; which story all, who have the honour to be acquainted with that profound divine, know to be a most groundless and impudent defamation.
Several such indignities as these having been offer'd to the grave fathers of the university, (the reverend the heads and governours of colleges and halls) they winc'd like so many gall'd horses, and said to one another, Gentlemen, these are no jests; if we suffer this, we shall become the sport of freshmen and servitors; let us expel him, for an example to others not to take such freedoms with their superiors.
And Terræ-Filius was accordingly expell'd almost every act. Yet, for all that, some body was still found upon these occasions, endow'd with christian courage enough to rebuke wickedness in high places, at the expence of infamy and nakedness; the usual consequences of incurring ecclesiastical displeasure!
To put therefore an entire stop to this dangerous practice, of exposing the Dons to derision and detestation, it hath been though expedient, for the safety of their reputations, to have no publick act at all for some years; and when they have, to have no Terræ-Filius: by this means obliging me to silence when there is most occasion for me to open my mouth.
Being of a very talkative temper, and withal something splenatick, you must needs think, loving readers, how uneasy this confinement has been to me: to see ignorance, superstition, tyranny and priestcraft riding rampant in the seminaries of religion; to see barefaced, fraudulent actions daily committed by the hands that ought to administer justice; to see perjury and rebellion publickly preached and inculcated into the minds of youth; to see the virtuous munificence of founders and benefactors squandered away at gaming-tables, and amongst stockjobbers, or guzzled down in hogsheads of wine or tost up in fricasees and venison pasties: I say to see all this, and to see no publick remedy apply'd or propos'd to be apply'd to this complication of evils, would extort satire and indignation from the most lukewarm breast. ———Nam quis inique
Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?
Being therefore denied the liberty to ridicule vice, as I us'd to do, in a publick manner, I have liv'd incog' for several years at Oxford, and have been a careful and nice observer of all proceeding publick and private, which have been carried on in that place ever since; I have remarked the lives and conduct of all persons of note there, both male and female; and having taken exact minutes of each material curcumstance, I am come up to town, being no longer able to contain my self, and have taken lodgings at a printer's, in order to retail my observations out to the world in a weekly half-sheet, that all persons, and especially the meaner sort (who have conceiv'd such a veration of the universaties) may judge whether their implicit zeal for those learned bodies (as they are called) be justly plac'd or not; and whether, in their present unregulated state, they are not the nurseries of pedantry instead of sound learning, of bigottry instead of loyalty; whether thier statutes (both those of the university and of particular colleges) are not generally perverted, or partially executed; whether the publick disipline is not wretchedly neglected, and the publick exercises confin'd to nonsensical jargon, and the mere burlesque of true knowledge; whether even those useless exercises are perform'd as they ought to be; whether the criterion of merit is not render'd very precarious; and whether the method of taking degrees is not very unjust and arbitrary; whether most benefactions, both publick and private, are not either embezzell'd or misapply'd; and whether (supposing all this can be proved) the loud complaints, that have so long and so often been made to no effect, were reasonable or not; and whether the regulation, which has been so earnestly expected, was not justly and honestly expected.