Читать книгу Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars - Gooch Richard - Страница 22

Both Oxford and Cambridge have been famous for inveterate smokers. Amongst them was the learned Dr. Isaac Barrow, who said “it helped his thinking.” His illustrious pupil, Newton, was scarcely less addicted to the “Indian weed,” and every body has heard of his hapless courtship, when, in a moment of forgetfulness, he popped the lady’s finger into his burning pipe, instead of popping the question, and was so chagrined, that he never could be persuaded to press the matter further. Dr. Parr was allowed his pipe when he dined with the first gentleman in Europe, George the Fourth, and when refused the same indulgence by a lady at whose house he was staying, he told her, “she was the greatest tobacco-stopper he had ever met with.” The celebrated Dr. Farmer, of black-letter memory, preferred the comforts of the parlour of Emmanuel College, of which he was master, and a “yard of clay” (there were no hookahs in his day,) to a bishopric, which dignity he twice refused, when offered to him by Mr. Pitt. Another learned