Page:Terræ-filius- or, the Secret History of the University of Oxford.djvu/41

 ———Nam quis inique Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat e?

Being therefore denied the liberty to ridicule vice, as I us'd to do, in a publick manner, I have liv'd incog' for everal years at Oxford, and have been a careful and nice oberver of all proceeding publick and private, which have been carried on in that place ever ince; I have remarked the lives and conduct of all perons of note there, both male and female; and having taken exact minutes of each material curcumtance, I am come up to town, being no longer able to contain my elf, and have taken lodgings at a printer's, in order to retail my obervations out to the world in a weekly half-heet, that all perons, and epecially the meaner ort (who have conceiv'd uch a veration of the univeraties) may judge whether their implicit zeal for thoe learned bodies (as they are called) be jutly plac'd or not; and whether, in their preent unregulated tate, they are not the nureries of pedantry intead of ound learning, of bigottry intead of loyalty; whether thier tatutes (both thoe of the univerity and of particular colleges) are not generally perverted, or partially executed; whether the publick diipline is not wretchedly neglected, and the publick exercies confin'd to nonenical jargon, and the mere burleque of true knowledge; whether even thoe ueles exercies are perform'd as they ought to be; whether the criterion of merit is not render'd very precarious; and whether the method of taking degrees is not very unjut and arbitrary; whether mot benefactions, both publick and private, are not either embezzell'd or miapply'd; and whether (uppoing all this can be proved) the loud complaints, that have o long and o often been made to no effect, were reaonable or not;