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Some of the sizars are pious men, I have no doubt, and I dare say the Fellows leave " "I swear this is too much," said Julian, using the only oath that ever in all his life-time crossed his lips. "You canting and mean Pshaw! you are beneath my abuse. Sizar indeed! there, take that, and begone."
Many of Saint Werner's most distinguished alumni have themselves sat at the sizars' table, and if any of them were blessed or cursed with sensitive dispositions, they will not be dead to the justice of these remarks.
When I consider how munificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with what pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call to mind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemn light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleries of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physical comforts which are provided both for instructors and for pupils; when I reflect that the very sizars and servitors are far better lodged and fed than those students who are to be, a few years hence, the priests and bishops of the Irish people; when I think of the spacious and stately mansions of the heads of houses, of the commodious chambers of the fellows and scholars, of the refectories, the combination rooms, the bowling greens, the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feast days, of the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam of the kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at once on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the butteries; and when I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I remember what was the faith of Edward the Third and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham and William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a Cambridge man.
These occurrences, happening at the same time, threw me into a profound revery. I awoke, and became a man of the world. I no longer resolved to be virtuous, and to hunt after the glory of your Romans and your Athenians, I resolved to become rich, powerful, and of worldly repute. "I abjured my honest sizars, and as I said before, I courted some rich 'Hats. Behold my first grand step in the world!
To many, even at St John's, the existence and whereabouts of the labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was unknown; some men in Ernest's time, who had rooms in the first court, had never found their way through the sinuous passage which led to it. In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere lads to grey-haired old men who had entered late in life.
The sizars at Saint Werner's do not dine at the same hour as the rest of the undergraduates, but the hour after, and their dinner consists of the dishes which have previously figured on the Fellows' table.
'And his son, returned the first don, 'only keeps company with sizars, I believe. 'So then, said I to myself, 'to deserve the praise even of clever men, one must have good wines, know plenty of earls, and for swear sizars. Nothing could be truer than my conclusion. "Anecdote the second is this: On the day I gained a high university prize I invited my friends to dine with me.
These occurrences, happening at the same time, threw me into a profound revery. I awoke, and became a man of the world. I no longer resolved to be virtuous, and to hunt after the glory of your Romans and your Athenians, I resolved to become rich, powerful, and of worldly repute. "I abjured my honest sizars, and as I said before, I courted some rich 'Hats. Behold my first grand step in the world!
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of Elia the junior Le G and F ; who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca: Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old Roman height about him.
For the next seven years he was moved about from school to school, always looked upon by his fellows as dull of wit, but good at games, and always in the forefront in mischief. At length, when Goldsmith was nearly seventeen, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. As you know, in those days sizars had to wear a different dress from the commoners.
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