LETTER FROM AN" OXFORD STUDENT TO HIS MAMMA. 151 



clearly that, with all his philosophy, her husband was a great fool. 

 He had talents, she knew, capable of providing the golden source 

 and means of respectability. Why then not exert them for this wise 

 and legitimate purpose ? Of what use was his ^Daemon, unless it 

 would pay his butcher's and his baker's bills ? Most eloquently and 

 most forcibly would she remonstrate with him, upon the folly of his 

 wasting his instructive breath without receiving a quid pro quo, and 

 of giving gratis lectures to all the young boobies of Athens. But 

 Socrates was a perfect philosopher, and cared little how domestic 

 matters prospered, provided he were left at liberty to lounge with 

 his idle companions through the groves of Academus, or to rigma- 

 role upon abstract questions in the Lyceum. 



Unhappy Xantippe ! How often did she curse the day when her 

 husband resigned the employment of a statuary, and commenced the 

 profession of a philosopher. In the bitterness of her matronly dis- 

 satisfaction, can we be surprised that she should at times assail her 

 husband in terms of keen invective, not unfrequently of undisguised 

 abuse? And when her partner, the man of a rectified temper, 

 listened to her patiently, and answered her with nothing but the 

 irritating smile of resignation, was it an unpardonable offence if she 

 seized the first domestic utensil, which came to hand, and did her 

 best to break the little philosopher's head with it? Not a word is 

 said, not a suspicion murmured against the purity of Xantippe's virtue, 

 and yet has her memory been outraged byj more abuse than would 

 have sufficed for the most incorrect lady among her contem- 

 poraries. And all this has happened merely because she had the 

 bad fortune to marry a philosopher who would not allow her even 

 the luxury of contradiction. With any other man less wise than to 

 neglect worldly comforts, and despise the adventitious charms of 

 wealth, more human too than to preserve a constant mastery over his 

 -temper, she might, and would probably, have enjoyed a tolerable 

 share of happiness. At any rate she would, as far as we can conjec- 

 ture, have escaped the unmerited notoriety to which she has been 

 condemned by prejudiced biographers and an undiscerning posterity. 



Oxford, 1835. 



LETTER FROM AN OXFORD STUDENT TO HIS MAMMA. 



Brazen-Nose Coll. 1832. 

 Dear Mamma, 



Your anger to soften, 

 At last I sit down to indite ; 

 'Tis clear I am wrong very often, 

 Since 'tis true I so seldom do write ! 



But now I'll be silent no longer, 



Pro and con all my deeds I'll disclose, 



All the pro's in my verse I'll make stronger, 

 And hide all my con's in my pro's. 



