Ch. 7: Georgian Oxford - Page 2

clouted shoes of his, and with that figure which even the exercise of skating could not have made "swan-like," to quote the young lady in "Pickwick"? Johnson was "sconced" in the sum of twopence for cutting lecture; and it is rather curious that the amount of the fine was the same four hundred years earlier, when Master Stoke, of Catte Hall (whose career we touched on in the second of these sketches), deserted his lessons. It was when he was thus sconced that Johnson made that reply which Boswell preserves "as a specimen of the antithetical character of his wit"--"Sir, you have sconced me twopence for non-attendance on a lecture not worth a penny."

Sconcing seems to have been the penalty for offences very various in degree. "A young fellow of Balliol College having, upon some discontent, cut his throat very dangerously, the master of his College sent his servitor to the buttery-book to sconce him five shillings; and," says the Doctor, "tell him that the next time he cuts his throat I'll sconce him ten!" This prosaic punishment might perhaps deter some Werthers from playing with edged tools.

From Boswell's meagre account of Johnson's Oxford career we gather some facts which supplement the description of Gibbon. The future historian went into residence twenty-three years after Johnson departed without taking his degree. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner, and was permitted by the easy discipline of Magdalen to behave just as he pleased. He "eloped," as he says, from Oxford, as often as he chose, and went up to town, where he was by no means the ideal of "the Manly Oxonian in London." The fellows of Magdalen, possessing a revenue which private avarice might easily have raised to 30,000 pounds, took no interest in their pupils. Gibbon's tutor read a few Latin plays with his pupil, in a style of dry and literal translation. The other fellows, less conscientious, passed their lives in tippling and tattling, discussing the "Oxford Toasts," and drinking other toasts to the king over the water. "Some duties," says Gibbon, "may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars," but "the velvet cap was the cap of liberty," and the gentleman commoner consulted only his own pleasure. Johnson was a poor scholar, and on him duties were imposed. He was requested to write an ode on the Gunpowder Plot, and Boswell thinks "his vivacity and imagination must have produced something fine." He neglected, however, with his usual indolence, this opportunity of producing something fine. Another exercise imposed on the poor was the translation of Mr. Pope's "Messiah," in which the young Pembroke man succeeded so well that, by Mr. Pope's own generous confession, future ages would doubt whether the English or the Latin piece was the original. Johnson complained that no man could be properly inspired by the