Читать книгу Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars - Gooch Richard - Страница 7

“Oxford must from all antiquity have been either somewhere or nowhere. Where was it in the time of Tarquinius Priscus? If it was nowhere, it surely must have been somewhere. Where was it?”—Facetiæ Cant.

Here is a conundrum to unravel, or a nut to crack, compared to which the Dædalean Labyrinth was a farce. After so many of the learned have failed to extract the kernel, though by no means deficient in what Gall and Spurzheim would call jawitiveness (as their writings will sufficiently show,) I should approach it with “fear and trembling,” did I not remember the encouraging reproof of “Queen Bess” to Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Fain would I climb but that I fear to fall”—so dentals to the task, come what may. A new light has been thrown upon the subject of late, in an unpublished “Righte Merrie Comedie,” entitled “Trinity College, Cambridge,” from which I extract the following