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And then their hair! positively curled and powdered, and growing over their shoulders, too; and when they passed their fingers through the curls, look you, there were rings on their fingers! Call you these scholars? Chaucer's "Clerk of Oxenforde" was of a very different type: For all that he might of his frendes hentc On books and in learning he it spente.
I looked not for thee until evensong." "I finished mine errand, good mistress," replied the youth, "earlier by much than I looked for to do." "Hast heard any news, Richard?" "None, mistress mine, unless it be news that a homily will be preached in Bostock Church on Sunday next ensuing, by a regular of Oxenforde, one Master Sastre."
There was the stately knight on sober steed, who had ridden in Christendom and heathenesse, and had "foughten for our faith at Tramissene;" and his son, the young squire, a lover, and a lusty bachelor, with curled locks and gay embroidery; a bold rider, a dancer, and a writer of verses, singing and fluting all day long, and "fresh as the month of May;" and his "knot-headed" yeoman; a bold forester, in green, with horn, and baudrick, and dagger, a mighty bow in hand, and a sheaf of peacock arrows shining beneath his belt; and the coy, smiling, simple nun, with her gray eyes, her small red mouth, and fair forehead, her dainty person clad in featly cloak and "'ypinched wimple," her choral beads about her arm, her golden brooch with a love motto, and her pretty oath by Saint Eloy; and the merchant, solemn in speech and high on horse, with forked beard and "Flaundrish bever hat;" and the lusty monk, "full fat and in good point," with berry brown palfrey, his hood fastened with gold pin. wrought with a love-knot, his bald head shining like glass, and his face glistening as though it had been anointed; and the lean, logical, sententious clerk of Oxenforde, upon his half-starved, scholar-like horse; and the bowsing sompnour, with fiery cherub face, all knobbed with pimples, an eater of garlic and onions, and drinker of "strong wine, red as blood," that carried a cake for a buckler, and babbled Latin in his cups; of whose brimstone visage "children were sore aferd;" and the buxom wife of Bath, the widow of five husbands, upon her ambling nag, with her hat broad as a buckler, her red stockings and sharp spurs; and the slender, choleric reeve of Norfolk, bestriding his good gray stot; with close-shaven beard, his hair cropped round his ears, long, lean, calfless legs, and a rusty blade by his side; and the jolly Limitour, with lisping tongue and twinkling eye, well-beloved franklins and housewives, a great promoter of marriages among young women, known at the taverns in every town, and by every "hosteler and gay tapstere."
It was for doing the same thing that Matthew Arnold immortalised a clerke of Oxenforde: though it may be that "since Elizabeth" such exploits have lost their prestige, as I knew of two students at the same university who a few years ago went off on a six weeks' lark with two Gipsy girls; but who, far from desiring to have the fact chronicled in immortal rhyme, were even much afraid lest it should get into the county newspaper!
Parson Leggatt is not much given to preaching, meseemeth." "I will go with you, Master Pynson," said Margery, resuming the concoction of the dainty dish before her, "with a very good will, for I should like greatly to hear the Reverend Father. I never yet heard preach a scholar of Oxenforde."
And a month afterwards, "Th' Erle of Oxenforde hath gotten hym a wyffe or at the leste a wyffe hath caught hym that is Mrs Anne Cycille, whearunto the Queen hath gyven her consent, the which hathe causyd great wypping, waling, and sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."
To whome I beseech Almighty God to impart long life, with encrease of much honour. From Vniversity Colledge in Oxenforde, the xviij. of September, 1566. Your Honours most bounden, The Life of Lucius Apuleius Briefly Described
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