Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/242

 Clerical Snobs, in which he describes the colleges as the last strongholds of Feudalism; concluding—

"Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and that badge still? Because Universities are the last places into which Reform penetrates. But now that she can go to College and back for five shillings, let her travel down thither."

Squire Headlong inquires in vain at Oxford for "men of taste and philosophers." Scythrop and Sir Telegraph were both cured at college of their love for learning. Desmond describes the university system as a "deep-laid conspiracy against the human understanding, * * * a ridiculous and mischievous farce." But Dr. Folliott refused to succumb. Alluding to some one who cannot quote Greek, he adds,—

"But I think he must have finished his education at some very rigid college, where a quotation, or any other overt act showing acquaintance with classical literature, was visited with a severe penalty. For my part, I made it my boast that I was not to be so subdued. I could not be abated of a single quotation by all the bumpers in which I was fined."

The same critic says elsewhere of the curriculum:

"Everything for everybody, science for all, schools for all, rhetoric for all, law for all, physic for all, words for all, and sense for none."

Pelham testifies that at Eton he was never taught a syllable of English literature, laws, or history; and was laughed at for reading Pope out of school. On his graduation from Cambridge, a place that "reeked with vulgar-*