228 GILBEET WHITE OF SELBOKNE 1773 



Jack has gone through several volumes of the * Spectator/ 

 and now seems much delighted with Derham's * Physico- 

 theol/ He does not manage yet to read Virgil with that 

 exactness of quantity that might now be expected ; but 

 construes well both in prose and verse. Brother Ben was 

 very urgent with me that you should not become a magis- 

 trate without very mature deliberation; because he had 

 been informed that some of your predecessors as magistrates 

 had met with great vexation from the mob of so populous a 

 town. Did he ever mention the matter to you ? 



To make me consistent with myself you must suppose 

 that I have heard of the probable disputes at College since I 

 wrote last to you. However, I do not suppose I shall be 

 called on this winter. We have had nothing bub wet, 

 windy, cloudy weather since the first of September. Most 

 of the barley is abroad ; some of it has been cut this month. 

 Hops will be dear: they were half destroyed by the wind. 

 Martins and swallows abound. 



The statement about the " disputes " at Oriel, 

 confirmed as it is by mention in Mulso's letters of 

 "the perverse party" at the College, rather tends to 

 show that Oxford was much in the same state as 

 when Hearne wrote, in 1726: "There are such 

 differences now in the University of Oxford (hardly 

 one college but where all the members are busied in 

 law business and quarrels not at all relating to the 

 promotion of learning), that good letters decay every 

 day, insomuch that this ordination on Trinity 

 Sunday at Oxford there were no fewer (as I am 

 informed) than fifteen denied orders for insufficiency, 

 which is the more to be noted because our bishops 

 and those employed by them are illiterate men." 



