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This club, in which were heard the first speeches ever composed by Lord Liverpool and Canning, met every Thursday evening at the rooms of the members, who were at its establishment limited to the number of six. Before their separation they voted and recorded the question which they were to debate on the ensuing Thursday evening. Sometimes they appeared at dinner in the hall dressed in their uniform, which was a brown coat, of rather an uncommon shade, with velvet cuffs and collar, the buttons bearing the initials of Demosthenes, Cicero, Pitt, and Fox. As the young orators were always as mute as the grave on all that concerned their institution, the anxiety which their fellow-collegians evinced to discover the meaning of their peculiar uniform was considerable. The club was dissolved in 1788.1

At the time when Gray was admitted to Peter House, Cambridge, Jacobitism and hard drinking still greatly prevailed in all grades of University society, much to the prejudice not only of good manners but also of good letters. A spirit of playing tricks upon freshmen was at this time very marked. Few men took the trouble to preserve a character for sobriety. 'The still air of delightful studies,' as Milton has it, was often broken by exhibitions of rough horse-play, and by much dissipation and extravagance. There was an absence of those arts which soften, refine, and embellish the intercourse of social life, an absence of rational and scholarly amusements that might have afforded a retreat, if necessary, from the bottle.

The regular academic costume, so late as 1799, consisted of knee breeches, of any colour, and white stockings. The sun of wigs had not even then set; they covered the craniums of nearly all dons and heads of houses. The gentlemen wore their hair tied up behind in a thin loop called a pigtail; footmen wore their hair tied up behind in a thick loop called a hoop.

Professor Pryme, speaking of his first year at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1799, states that in his uncle's time (1782) the dinner hour had been at noon, but was then at a quarter-past

Newton's Early Days of Canning, pp. 6-9.

two o'clock in term time, on account of the disputations in the Mathematical Schools commencing at three o'clock. Some years after, it was altered; the hour of the Schools was changed to twelve, and that of the dinner to four o'clock.

Our habits (says he) were to take some relaxation after dinner, to go to chapel at half-past five, then retire to our rooms, shut the outer door, take tea, and read till ten or eleven o'clock. There was supper in the hall at a quarter before nine, but very few partook of it. On Sundays we dined at a quarter-past one, and the afternoon university sermon at St. Mary's, which was well attended by the students, was at three o'clock. The Vice-Chancellor's weekly dinner parties were at half-past one, and all his company attended him to St. Mary's.1

At that time there were two coffee-houses in the town of Cambridge, where the gownsmen used to take their tea or coffee on summer evenings when there was no fire in their rooms. One was kept by a man named Smith, in Bridge Street, opposite the Round Church, and the other was in a room, set apart for the purpose, at the Rose Inn, facing the Market Place.

Hard drinking was the besetting sin of University society in the last century, both at Oxford and Cambridge, though more particularly the latter. To this both Henry Gunning, who was Esquire Bedell from 1789, and George Pryme, who was not only Professor of Political Economy, but thrice represented the borough at St. Stephen's, bear their emphatic testimony :

Buzzing (says the latter), unknown in the present day, was then universal. When the decanter came round to anyone, if it was nearly emptied, the next in succession could require him to finish it; but if the quantity left exceeded the bumper, the challenger was obliged to drink the remainder, and also a bumper out of the next fresh bottle. There was throughout these parties an endeavour to make each other drunk, and a pride in being able to resist the effects of the wine.2

What the Oxford undergraduate's drinking propensities were in the reign of George I. may be inferred from what Dr. Johnson told Boswell on their tour in Scotland in 1773. 'I

Pryme's Autob. Rec. p. 42.

2 Ibid. p. 41.

For evidence of the hard drinking at Oxford about the same period see Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, i. 53.

remember, when at Pembroke College, drinking three bottles. of port at a sitting, without feeling much the worse after it.'

The recreations of the gownsmen at the two Universities were much about the same. The chief appear to have been battledore and shuttlecock, bell ringing, swinging on the rope, in their own rooms; leap-frog, tag, hop-step-and-jump, and skittles,' riding and racing horses, against which the authorities set their faces, betting, fox-hunting (an expensive amusement which was enjoyed by only a few), cock-fighting, swimming, fishing, and pond-netting.

It is a fact worthy of special notice that boating on the river at Oxford so late as 1790, and at Cambridge so late as 1799, was not a customary exercise. An Oxford tutor named Cox, who published some interesting reminiscences of that University little more than a quarter of a century since, states that in the closing years of the eighteenth century, although racing had not been thought of, a very favourite amusement among the Oxford undergraduates was that of riding against time from the university city to the capital, a distance of one hundred and eight miles, in twelve hours or less, with relays of horses at regular intervals.

Wordsworth's Social Life at Eng. Univs. 166.

* Pryme's Autob. Rec. p. 43; Cox's Recollections of Oxford, p. 31.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE LITERARY WORLD.

The Augustan era of English literature-Its rise and wane-Evil consequences of Government patronage of authors-Miseries of literary life in London under the first Georges-Samuel Boyse-Dancing attendance upon the great-Private patronage-Publishing by subscription -Fulsome dedications-Laureate odes-Magazines and reviews--Circulating libraries and reading societies-Goldsmith's castigation of Chinese tales and English tours-Eighteenth-century novelsPamphlets-The Fourth Estate -Sketch of its history-Dr. Johnson as a reporter-Advertisements-The provincial press-Anonymity and noms-de-guerre.

Ir was long customary to style the first quarter of the age under review the Augustan era of English literature, by reason of a resemblance in point of intellectual activity which was supposed to exist between it and the lettered ease of society in the capital of the Roman empire under the beneficent sway of the Emperor Augustus. Modern critics, however, have been unable to endorse this verdict in its entirety, for the simple reason that it expresses only a general truth. If the term Augustan must be held to imply that those who devoted themselves to the literary profession in England during the twelve years which comprise the reign of Queen Anne constantly received signal marks of the royal favour and protection, that the civil power stooped to flatter that order of men by their familiarity and by a system of rewards, that they were in a position to command the universal admiration and respect of their fellow-men, and that both they and their works engrossed a far greater amount of public attention than had hitherto been similarly bestowed upon them, then assuredly the epithet Augustan loses none of its force. But if, on the other hand, it is sought to institute a comparison in point of literary excel

VOL. II.

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lence, as, for example, between Horace and Pope, or between Addison and Cicero, the epithet Augustan is inapplicable. The resemblance is most imperfect. It will scarcely be denied by its greatest admirer,' observes the most recent critic of eighteenthcentury literature, if he be a man of wide reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five great ages of literature.' Taking all things into consideration, it must be conceded that the reign of Anne was undoubtedly the brightest period in the literary annals of the eighteenth century, and was literally the golden age for authors. The Government seemed to take a pride in lavishing lucrative appointments and honours. upon literary merit with unsparing hand. The pathway to fame and emolument was one that lay broad and straight to all who evinced adroitness and skill in literary composition. Stars, coronets, mitres, earldoms, garters, white staves and black rods -these then constituted the rewards of literature. The representative English men of letters, of whom the chief contributors to the 'Spectator,' the 'Tatler,' and the 'Guardian' most readily present themselves to the mind, differed little if at all from those who in their day moved in the first ranks of wit, genius, and fashion. In the gayest of attire they congregated at the coffee-houses and the clubs in St. James's and St. Paul's Churchyard, frequented the playhouses, and were cordially welcomed at the residences of the haut ton in St. James's Square and Hatton Garden. At the proper seasons they were to be seen drinking the waters at Epsom or parading the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells. Occasionally they were to be met with in the salons of Paris and Vienna, surrounded by crowds of admirers, and basking in the full sunshine of the favour of great men.' Matthew Prior was despatched abroad in the capacity of an ambassador, Joseph Addison was appointed Secretary of State, Jonathan Swift was promoted to the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin; while Congreve, Hughes, Rowe, Philips, Parnell, Stepney, and many others were all comfortably provided for. Places and appointments seemed to exist for no other reason than to be conferred upon the servants of the Nine, in order that they might take their ease, eat, drink and be merry. 1 Gosse, Hist. of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 398.

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