Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/335

Rh another college, in a moment of thoughtlessness, exclaimed, "This is a beggarly college indeed, the plate that our founder stole would build another as good." For this irreverent exclamation, Cuffe was formally deprived of his fellowship, sacrificed for a jest to the outraged memory of the joke-loving Sir Thomas; and Warton, with amusing gravity, justifies the expulsion, because "he wantonly converted one of his practical jokes, a species of humour not uncommon among our festive ancestors, into a petty larceny."

An incident in the life of Bathurst may excite a smile. No college in Oxford suffered more severely in the Civil Wars than Balliol. After the Restoration, Trinity, which had been more fortunate, soon recovered itself, but the blackened walls of Balliol remained for years a picture of desolation, and a sad memento of the fury of factious animosity. One side of the building looks into the gardens of Trinity, and Bathurst, then head of his