Читать книгу Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars - Gooch Richard - Страница 43

Whose very name conjures up the spirits of ten thousand wits, holding both sides, over a copus of Trinity ale and a classical pun, would not only frequently “steal a few hours from the night,” but see out both lights and liquids, and seem none the worse for the carouse. He had one night risen for the purpose of reaching his hat from a peg to depart, after having finished the port, sherry, gin-store, &c., when he espied a can of beer, says Dyer, (surely it must have been audit,) in a corner. Restoring his hat to its resting place, he reseated himself with the following happy travestie of the old nursery lines—

“When wine is gone, and ale is spent,

Then small beer is most excellent.”

It was no uncommon thing for his gyp to enter his room with Phœbus, and find him still en robe, with no other companions but a Homer, Æschylus, Plato, and a dozen or two other old Grecians surrounding an empty bottle, or what his late Royal Highness the Duke of York would have styled “a marine,” id est “a good fellow, who had done his duty, and was ready to do it again.” Upon his gyp once peeping in before day light, and finding him still up, Porson answered his “quod petis?” (whether he wanted candles or liquor,) with

ου τοδε ουδ’ αλλο.

Scotticè—neither Toddy nor Tallow.

At another time, when asked what he would drink? he replied?—“aliquid” (a liquid.)

He was once