Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/18

4 done, he was to consider what was to belong to the reverence of so great a name as Master, viz., what he ought to have in relation to his habit, because for fifteen days he was to walk the streets in a round cap, not a plaited cap; neither in a collobe or tabard. He ought also to be so chaste and modest in word, look and action, that he may resemble a virgin newly espoused. Also that he was not to go alone; but always—chiefly within these fifteen days—have with him an Esquire or supporter of his body or at least a companion.

"When the ultimate day of proceeding was come, care was to be taken that the Inceptor should be commended by a venerable company of Masters with a brief and well-ordered speech, and that also the Master under whom he proceeds should use decent and fruitful words, lest the venerable company of Masters should be reviled by the standers-by, for the miscarriage and ill deportment of one Master redounds to the dishonour of all the rest."

Laureation, which had accompanied degrees in law and medicine, was reserved eventually for the graduate in grammar. It was in fact, his Master's degree in that faculty which included rhetoric and the art of versification. These degrees were more common at Oxford than at Cambridge, and there are various instances of their being taken so late as the sixteenth century. Thus by the University Registers at Oxford, we find that on the 12th March, 1511, one Edward Watson, student in grammar, obtained a concession to be graduated and laureated in that faculty, provided he composed a Latin comedy, that is; any short poem not of a tragic cast, or one hundred Latin verses in praise of his University. The next year Richard Smyth obtained the like concession on condition that at the next public Act he should affix one hundred Latin hexameters to the great