第27章

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS

All the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and Crump in these two pictures.They were tutors in our time, and Crump is since advanced to be President of the College.He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of a University Snob.

At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius.These Services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in the Church, and he is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped the bench.

Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and his position as President the highest in England.He expects the fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort of service that Cardinals pay to the Pope.I am sure Crawler would have no objection to carry his trencher, or Page to hold up the skirts of his gown as he stalks into chapel.He roars out the responses there as if it were an honour to heaven that the President of Saint Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own lodge and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his superior.

When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doctors of the University, a breakfast was given at Saint Boniface; on which occasion Crump allowed the Emperor Alexander to walk before him, but took the PAS himself of the King of Prussia and Prince Blucher.He was going to put the Hetman Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with the under college tutors; but he was induced to relent, and merely entertained that distinguished Cossack with a discourse on his own language, in which he showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it.

As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about Crump than about the Grand Llama.A few favoured youths are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge; but they do not speak unless first addressed by the Doctor; and if they venture to sit down, Crump's follower, Mr.Toady, whispers, 'Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get up?--The President is passing;' or 'Gentlemen, the President prefers that undergraduates should not sit down;' or words to a similar effect.

To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great people.He rather patronizes them than otherwise; and, in London, speaks quite affably to a Duke who has been brought up at his college, or holds out a finger to a Marquis.He does not disguise his own origin, but brags of it with considerable self-gratulation:--'I was a Charity-boy,' says he; 'see what I am now; the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest College of the greatest University of the greatest Empire in the world.' The argument being, that this is a capital world, for beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get on horseback.

Hugby owes his eminence to patient merit and agreeable perseverance.He is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature, with just enough of scholarship to fit him to hold a lecture, or set an examination paper.He rose by kindness to the aristocracy.It was wonderful to see the way in which that poor creature grovelled before a nobleman or a lord's nephew, or even some noisy and disreputable commoner, the friend of a lord.He used to give the young noblemen the most painful and elaborate breakfasts, and adopt a jaunty genteel air, and talk with them (although he was decidedly serious) about the opera, or the last run with the hounds.It was good to watch him in the midst of a circle of young tufts, with his mean, smiling, eager, uneasy familiarity.He used to write home confidential letters to their parents, and made it his duty to call upon them when in town, to condole or rejoice with them when a death, birth, or marriage took place in their family; and to feast them whenever they came to the University.I recollect a letter lying on a desk in his lecture-room for a whole term, beginning, 'My Lord Duke.' It was to show us that he corresponded with such dignities.